Backwinter
by EightSixEightSeven
Summary: It's 1972 and America has been destroyed and buried under the snows of a nuclear winter - but that can't be right... can it?
1. Episode 1

**Doctor Who**

**BACKWINTER**

**By Alex Lee Rankin**

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip...

Tiny droplets of water slipped from the old rusted tap and plunged downward to splatter across the stained surface of the basin before vanishing into the drain. The sound was constant, steady, repetitive, like the incessant nagging of an unsatisfied wife struggling to rouse a lazy husband from his dozing on the living room sofa, but somehow distant, as if somewhere outside the world. As if in another world, another life. Slowly the world with the drips and the world without somehow merged, and reality touched perception, stabbing it with a finger and bursting the bubble. Dark eyelids rolled back, one of them twitching at the sudden sensation of bruised soreness, and equally dark eyes looked around the room. It was gloomy and shadowy, but not pitch black. The door was open a crack and a dim yellow glare spilled into the large windowless room in no significant proportion. The place still stank and that goddamn tap was still dripping.

Louis Hayes slowly gathered himself up off the concrete floor, wincing, groaning and swearing under his breath as he felt the pain from all the bruises he'd acquired before the looters had bundled him into this room and knocked him out. On his knees, he reached up and gripped the edge of the sink and levered himself up to stand properly on his feet. He patted his body down and registered that his gun was no longer on his person. Swearing again, he turned and opened the door. When the light hit his already sore eyes, Louis swore again. Louis swore a lot. More than a lot of people would say a good American should. But were there any good Americans left? It seemed by now there were only the bastards who controlled the streets and the bastards who tried to control the bastards who controlled the streets. America had been a good nation once. It had been a nation once.

Looking around the open space of the factory yard outside, Louis fought to adjust his eyes and get in some proper focus. It wasn't helping much. There wasn't anything to see anyway, just the yard, left empty by the looters, covered with thick snow just like everything else was these days and awkwardly lit by the sulphur lamps that people hung out at night. Louis shook his head as he stepped out into the yard, remembering when he'd signed up. In those days cops could do stuff, wave their guns around and put the fear of God into some of the guys that pulled the kind of stunts that were now commonplace in the city. Now there was no proper law enforcement – there wasn't even any proper government. The only people anyone was afraid of were the Russians. Sighing, Louis made for an old workbench, pulled up the tarpaulin that had been thrown over it, shook the snow off, put it back down and sat on it. He put his hands together and said a prayer. He apologised for his earlier profanities and asked what had become of America. He believed in his heart that somehow God would tell him what had happened to the grand old United States and how to get them back. He just wanted it to be soon. Soon enough for it to make a difference.

The hiss of steam from an engine startled Louis and he stood up and turned round. Staring through the wire fence he saw the modified pickup truck with the machine gun mounted in the trailer section pull over outside, steam hissing from the pistons on its iron wheels. The gun was manned, the tall, skinny blonde guy in a thick donkey jacket swinging the weapon around to line it up with Louis's hide. Another scrawny guy leaned out of the truck's cab. "Hey pig!" he shouted at Louis, struggling to keep the fat cigar between his teeth in place as he called. "Shoulda got those dudes, man. We could use some junk ourselves."

Louis knew the guy in the cab. Joey Day was the man they called the 'Trash Collector' in most criminal circles. He ran a few looter groups in the area, and he didn't bother the few cops that were left unless they picked on him or his boys. He was happy to let the cops just knock out his rivals, and when they failed to do so he showed them who was boss. Louis guessed in an instant what was about to happen. He dived back into the washroom and closed the door as the machine gun erupted. Making for the best cover, he ducked under the basin with the leaky tap. He sat on something that almost entered the crack of his behind and he swore, sitting up fast and swearing again as he hit his head on the sink. He reached under him and felt instantly better as his hands closed around his gun. The firing outside stopped. He knew he wouldn't have long. Louis flung the door open as the truck screeched away and fired. The man on the gun tumbled out of the back of the truck into the road. Obviously far too interested in protecting his own back to consider his comrade, Joey drove on into the night. Louis ran to the end of the fence and out through the open gate, past the red brick walls plastered with the Daylight Gang's tag graffiti and into the road where lay the prone figure of one of Joey's salvage boys, still alive, but bleeding, slowly reddening the stark white snow. Louis looked down at him. "This is my territory today, asshole," he told the injured thug. Then he shot him in the head. The youth's head seemed to explode in slow motion, fragments of bone and grey matter washed out across the snow in a tide of crimson fluid. The fluid seeped into the snow and stained it, creating red slush and settling to crystallise and slowly congeal. Blood and cranial detritus splashed up Louis's uniform trousers and spattered across his boots. He scowled at his shins and then he took the can of white spray paint from the crook's belt and walked over to the derelict factory wall. There he painted over the Daylight Gang's tag and underneath it sprayed NYPD.

**EPISODE ONE**

The Doctor grunted in annoyed frustration for about the eighteenth time in ten minutes as he picked up the TARDIS dematerialisation circuit, examined it for a moment, and put it down again. There were still quite a few problems with it then, surmised Jo Grant as she sat on the bench opposite the Doctor's workspace, watching him because she hadn't been given any other jobs to do. There were times when she hated being blonde and pretty and having nice legs, because within military surroundings such things did everything for a girl but get her taken seriously. Even in James Bond films all that the pretty girls did was walk about in swimwear and have sex with the hero a lot. She'd imagined when she joined that she could turn around that Bond-girl lifestyle by showing that a young, attractive female could also be a strong, intelligent agent, but on her first day she'd been palmed off onto UNIT's pet scientist, an eccentric pseudo-Edwardian gent who was anything but James Bond in some ways and the epitome in others, and done very little other than pass him his test-tubes and make tea. She hadn't even put on a bathing suit or had sex with anyone, not that either of those were particularly important at the present time. Jo was rather more interested in her career as an agent than in being some suave, smooth-talking ex-public schoolboy's dolly bird at the moment, and life with the Doctor had at least been anything but dull, even though very little had happened since her first assignment with him. Admittedly she'd got a bit of action there – not in the Bond-girl sense, but in the realms of adventure. It hadn't been an ideal situation, being hypnotised by some sort of loony terrorist who had something personal against the Doctor and had plans to assist an alien invasion, but it had been a real blast for a first job. But since then there had been nothing to do at all, no sign of anything that even vaguely resembled an adventure. All Jo had managed to do since that day had been to learn a bit about the Doctor's police box thing and what he was up to with it, constantly taking parts out and messing about with them. It was, apparently, a spaceship... or a time-machine... or both, and apparently when it was working it could just pop from one place to another in a matter of seconds, even if the places were millions of miles apart. But it was also broken, and the Doctor was having no luck at all getting it to work. Jo smiled to herself as she watched him. He was barking mad, of course. Time travel and spaceships in police boxes! What a silly idea! He was just some nutty professor who had this dream of inventing a time-machine and wrapped himself in stories about it. It was sweet in a way. Perhaps the Doctor was lonely deep inside, and just told these stories to seem interesting. He really had no idea how interesting he was.

"Great jumping nematodes!" the Doctor suddenly exclaimed, completely shattering Jo's train of thought and also rather startling her. "Jo, I think I've got it!" And he stood up from his seat, clutching the curiously shaped piece of circuitry from inside his box.

Jo stood up too, placing her hands demurely behind her back. "Really?" she smiled, humouring him. She was sure that this would be another of those occasions when he thought he 'had it' but would soon emerge from the box wearing his disappointed face and produce an explanation of his failure that one would require top-grade qualifications in every known science (plus a few others) to understand.

The Doctor nodded. "I've managed to bypass the dematerialisation circuit," he told her excitedly. "I think I can get her to take off. We might not manage a time trip, but we could definitely move a few thousand miles or so in space." And he dashed into the battered blue police box in the corner of the cramped and cluttered laboratory provided by UNIT. Jo waited outside the box, unsure about clambering into its cramped space and ending up shut in a cupboard with this chap. In a moment he burst out again. "After you, Miss Grant," he beamed, holding open the door.

Jo didn't like the invitation one bit, but she'd read _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ and she thought that she could play along with the Doctor's imagination. When she stepped through the doors she made a mental note to find something long, flat and curved next time she was alone and give herself a jolly good spanking for being so cruel. She was glad she had never said to the Doctor openly that she'd disbelieved his tales of the TARDIS. The interior of the little cupboard was absolutely staggering, white and shiny and open-plan and... and _spacious_. Spacious in a way that it couldn't be, shouldn't be. But it was. "Groovy," she gasped in awe as she looked around.

The Doctor walked blithely into the huge room behind her and strode toward the complicated table of controls at its centre. "How very modern," he replied, and it took Jo a moment to realise he was referring to her use of slang. He was looking at his controls, some of which looked like they might be computers of some sort, and adjusting things. The doors swung shut with a mechanical growl that startled Jo a little. "Settle down, now," the Doctor smiled. "I expect this is a bit of a shock for you."

"Uh huh," was all Jo could say, nodding slowly.

"So," the Doctor said with a smile. "Where to?"

Jo looked at him. "Where to?"

The Doctor nodded, still beaming. "As you're my guest for this trip, the first since I've got the TARDIS working, you may choose the destination."

"Can it really go places?"

"Absolutely. Anywhere absolutely. When it's working properly."

"Is it working properly?"

"Almost?"

"So where can it go when it's _almost_ working properly?"

The Doctor put his hands in his pockets. "Well, she still can't travel in Time. I need to do a little more work there, and she can't travel far enough in space to reach another planet, or even the moon, so how about anywhere – absolutely anywhere – on Earth?"

Jo smiled. She wasn't convinced that this magic box could actually go anywhere, but she remembered that five minutes ago she didn't even believe that it was anything more than a police telephone box. Or maybe a theatrical prop. "New York," she said finally. "I've always wanted to go there."

"Any particular reason?" asked the Doctor.

Jo shrugged. "Other than the romance of American films?"

The Doctor chuckled. "New York it is, Miss Grant." And he reached for the controls.

Jo watched intently as the Doctor fiddled with dials, pressed buttons and pulled little levers and things, and the glass column in the centre oscillated rhythmically, the little element-things inside it glowing and fading in time with its movements. She wondered if she could really go to New York without a plane ticket, and if the day she did would be today.

Then something happened.

Everything slowed down for a moment. Then sped up. There was a flash from the control console and the Doctor jumped back for a moment. The whole room shook and both Jo and the Doctor tumbled to the floor. The vibrations continued for maybe ten minutes. Then everything was quiet and peaceful again, the white room still. Jo stumbled to her feet, fearing for her dignity in the extremely short dress she had on, and dusted herself down. The Doctor also managed to stand, and he stood at the console, waving away a small cloud of smoke. "What happened?" Jo asked him.

The Doctor seemed worried. "I'm not sure." He checked the console. "Ah. The polymode-output on the transitional stabiliser burned out. Probably the dematerialisation-bypass circuit taking a little too much power caused a bit of feedback."

Jo rubbed her head. "A bit beyond me, Doctor," she said. "Sorry."

"Oh, it just means that we had a bumpy ride," the Doctor explained. "The good news is that we got there in the end."

Suddenly Jo's eyes lit up. "New York?" she asked. "We made it?"

The Doctor nodded, operating the door control. "If you'd care to step outside."

Deciding against hesitation, desperate to know if it was true, Jo darted through the doors.

It was dark where Jo found herself, and cold, and there was a strange smell in the air. The space she was standing in was cramped, a hard surface in front of her giving only maybe twelve inches of space to move. The TARDIS had materialised with its doors facing a wall. There was light in Jo's periphery and she edged around the TARDIS exterior. "Be careful coming out, Doctor," she called. "The doors are facing a wall."

"That's unusual," said the Doctor as he emerged. "The doors usually face away from any obstacles. The TARDIS is programmed to materialise in positions that allow me to get out."

"Perhaps it's something to do with that bumpy ride we had?" Jo inferred.

"Maybe," replied the Doctor as he moved around the box to join her.

Jo stopped as soon as she found the source of the light. There was a gaping hole in the wall, the sunlight streaming through and partially illuminating the area. The wall was a strange shape, all tucks and curves, and somehow familiar to Jo, though she couldn't place it. She carefully moved toward the hole. "I think I can get a look outside," she called to the Doctor. "See where we are."

"Be careful," the Doctor replied as he came into the light. "It feels as though we might be somewhere quite high up."

"You can say that again," breathed Jo as she stuck her head through the hole that was big enough for her to fall through, holding onto the ragged edge of the obviously deliberately created puncture in the skin of an object she had only before seen in photographs and movies. She suddenly realised what all the lumps and curves were in the wall. An inverted face.

The Doctor joined her at the edge of the hole. "Oh no," he gasped.

"It really is New York," Jo said. She wanted to be wrong, but she knew she wasn't.

"Liberty Island," nodded the Doctor. "Inside the Statue."

"What's left of her," Jo said. "What's happened to her?"

The Doctor looked out at the desolate landscape outside, the waters around the island choked up with debris and floating chunks of ice, no surviving sign of any of New York's famous skyscrapers, everything smashed and lying in ruins, covered with the thickest snow he'd ever seen on Earth. "More to the point," he said, "what's happened to America?"

**I**

**THE ROAD BEHIND**

The lift doors slid open and Sergei Volkov stepped into the corridor. He vaguely registered the two guards flanking the lift entrance as they clattered to attention but ignored them, knowing that acknowledging them would simply be a waste of his valuable time. These men were trained to be obedient and loyal dogs, coming to heel when called, and it was the rule they accepted when they volunteered. It wouldn't make a blind bit of difference whether Volkov acknowledged them or not, and things ran more efficiently that way. He carried on down the plain grey corridor with its red tiled floor and no windows, guided by the strip-lighting and the signs on the walls with arrows pointing to various destinations. Finally he reached the large dark green bulkhead with its warning clearly stencilled in red and two more guards who sprang to attention. Volkov produced his identity card. A matter of simple precaution, despite the fact that there wasn't a man in the building who didn't know him. One of the guards read the card and passed it back, and then he stepped aside, revealing the small panel set into the wall that he had been blocking with his body. The panel was, like the door, a plain green rectangle, but it possessed three features: a small television screen, a button and a speaker/microphone grille. Volkov pressed the button and waited. The screen flickered on and a young man's face appeared. "Major Volkov for the attention of Professor Tamashevska," announced Volkov.

"You're early for your usual progress report, Major," said the man on the screen, his English accent separating him from the bunker's mostly Russian compliment. "You don't normally make speculative calls."

"Just let me in, you idiot," snapped Volkov.

The chap on the screen sighed. "All right."

The hiss of hydraulic valves signalled the opening of the door, and a moment later the huge, heavy iron bulkhead swung inward. Volkov marched through into the laboratory, stalking across the floor past the engineers and technicians, the metalworkers and labourers, the book-keepers and teaboys, to where Professor Tamashevska was working. The Professor was carefully examining the latest experimental specimen. "Professor," Volkov demanded. "We must speak at once."

"I'm busy," said the Professor. "Can't you see that?"

Volkov stared at Tamashevska's back in anger. "We are all busy," he said testily. "We all have jobs to do and we are all working toward the same end."

"Are we, I wonder?" Olya Tamashevska turned finally to face Volkov and brushed a few strands of her black hair from her face. "I used to be a surgeon once, you know, saving lives and helping people to recover from the effects of serious injury. Then what happens to me? I'm drafted out of civilian life altogether and reduced to the level of a butcher because no one thought about the consequences before firing nuclear missiles."

"That is mutinous talk, Professor," Volkov growled. "You speak as though you _want_ to be put on a charge."

"Put on a charge?" Tamashevska scoffed. "Me? I don't think so, Major. You need me. The worst thing you can do is place me under house arrest and force me to continue my work, and if you want to do that, you just go ahead. I can't see in what way it will be different from my current situation here."

Volkov was getting angrier by the moment. Tamashevska was right – he couldn't discipline her. She was far too valuable. She was the only one who understood the project. He tried appealing to her reason, the one weakness she seemed to possess. "Brezhnev has said that if the anti-radiation treatments are successful then we can go home once everyone has undergone the process. You wanted to save lives, you're doing it."

Tamashevska scowled at him. She was such a pretty woman and it completely ruined her lovely cheekbones and eyes to look so annoyed. "But why does this have to be the method?" She indicated an unconscious man slumped on a trolley nearby and looking a sorry state.

"We have to survive," Volkov insisted. "Do you want to die in this toilet of a dead country, infested in every corner of your body with cancers?"

Tamashevska turned her back on him. "Just go," she said. "Get out."

"I have matters to discuss with you."

"Then discuss and then go."

"The levels are decreasing significantly, but they are still beyond acceptable tolerance. It's just not clearing up fast enough. We hadn't expected it to take this long, but..."

"But it has, and you want me to get the apparatus finished quicker."

"Yes."

The Professor carried on poking around in the experiment on the bench in front of her. "I'm no miracle worker. Get me the resources and I'll do what I can."

Volkov nodded. "Send me a memorandum," he said. "List everything you need and you'll get it." And he marched back toward the bulkhead door. He would have to call the Kremlin and let his superiors know the state of affairs in America, and then he would have to ask for more men, more equipment and more money. He looked forward to neither discussion.

Jo felt sick as she looked at the curving staircase in front of her, its steps stretching ahead, looming toward the darkness out of range of the Doctor's torch. It didn't help her queasiness either that there was a curious acrid smell in the air, similar to the smell of tyres on a speeding car. Burnt rubber. She was thankful that the Doctor had thought to pack a few things before their descent, though she had no idea of the extent of his provision for the sake of their survival. Both Jo herself and the Doctor carried a rucksack, and the Doctor carried a large powerful torch and had warned Jo to walk behind him as he carried it. He claimed that it was developed in the early twenty-first century and while it certainly provided plenty of clear light its one failing was that the refraction index was so dense that at close range it could cook a small dog. Any human being or similar organic life form could be very badly burned if positioned within the beam's range. But being cooked was the least of Jo's worries. As she stepped gingerly down behind the Doctor, gripping the rail tight, she closed her eyes and shook more with fear than cold, even though the cold was intense and her tiny dress afforded her legs no protection at all. The stairs were creaking and Jo had noticed rust on the rails and on the edges of the steps. Who knew when the staircase had last been used or how safe – or unsafe – it was? She desperately needed a distraction, and she counted her blessings that she'd had one since their arrival. "How can New York be in that state?" she asked the Doctor as she eased a foot onto the step below.

"New York City has always been in New York State, Jo," the Doctor chuckled, knowing that the deliberate joke would help her to keep her mind off her fears. But then he switched to a more serious approach, being concerned about the issue himself. "But I must admit, I didn't expect to find it like this. It looks like a nuclear winter."

"A nuclear what?"

"Nuclear winter, Jo. The climatic after-effect of an atomic war."

"Doctor," Jo continued curiously. "Could we have time travelled? By accident? I mean, I know you said you hadn't fixed the TARDIS enough to manage in on purpose, but could that bumpy ride have moved us into the future?"

"I'm not sure, Jo," the Doctor said. "It's too hard to tell. The TARDIS can be complicated at times, even for me. But somehow I doubt it."

"You mean it's still 1972?" asked Jo.

"I think so. Or very near it."

"But how can it be? There hasn't been a nuclear war. Wouldn't we have heard about it?"

"I've experienced something very similar to this before, Jo. Quite recently, as it happens, and that was to do with my repairs on the TARDIS too."

"What happened?"

"I crossed over into a different timeline. It's a bit hard to explain, but I arrived in exactly the same place I left, exactly the same, but different."

"Eh?"

The Doctor waved the torch around for a moment, and then carried on down the stairs. "Every decision has multiple potential consequences depending on what one decides," he explained. "If you have a choice of either yes or no and you say yes, you'll get the result of that yes, but what might've happened if you'd said no? One theory suggests that when a decision goes one way, at that precise point, time becomes a sort of forked road, branching off a separate future where it went the other. My recent experiences have proven that theory to be true."

Jo sighed. "I'm still a bit lost, Doctor."

The Doctor searched for a suitable analogy. "If a man asked you to marry him," he tried. "You can either say yes or no. If you say yes, you'll be married. If you say no, you won't."

"Right."

"And there's a school of temporal philosophy which suggests that if you said yes and got married, there will be a separate timeline breaking off from the moment before you made the decision, and within that timeline is played out the life you'd have had if you'd said no and stayed single."

Jo thought for a moment. "So we're walking around in What If World?"

The Doctor smiled. Jo had her own way of making sense of complicated things. "Yes, exactly," he said happily.

"But what happened here?" Jo asked, her confusion sapped but her concern building. "What change in decision could make such a drastic difference?"

"Hold it right there, buddy."

The Doctor looked around to try and pick up the source of the voice, careful to keep the torch still in case the person who called was close enough to be burned. "I'm quite still," he called into the darkness. "I assume we're both at gunpoint."

"You got it, smart guy," said the woman. "Shine your torch down to your right a little."

"I don't think that's wise," said the Doctor.

"Do it," the woman snapped. "Or your girlfriend gets a bullet between her cheeks, and if you've worked out where I'm standing you'll have worked out that doesn't mean I'm gonna shoot her in the face."

"All right," the Doctor said, carefully angling the torch down. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

"Jesus!" the woman yelped and the Doctor heard her gun clatter to the floor. He immediately swung the torch away from her. "Okay," she said. "You win. I got my hands up. I'm all yours."

The Doctor continued down the stairs, keeping her just in the torch's light but out of its actual beam as he moved in to meet her. As he came in close enough to put her at risk he switched the torch off, plunging the whole staircase into darkness and making Jo squeak. "Our intentions are peaceful, I assure you," the Doctor told the American woman. "We've no wish to harm you or to keep you prisoner. You may leave whenever you wish."

"You're British," observed the woman's disembodied voice.

"In a way," said the Doctor.

"Ex-pats, huh?" said the woman. "Russians making things hot – or should I say cold – for you too?"

"Not exactly. We've been... out of circulation. What's happened to the City?"

"New York? Jesus. You musta been out of circulation. What were you, deep frozen or something?"

"It's complicated."

"I bet my ass it is."

"I'm not sure that wager would make either of us any the wiser," observed the Doctor. "So instead why don't we pool what resources of knowledge we have and see if we can't manage to come up with a civilised conversation?"

"Nuke York," said the woman flatly. "That's what people are calling the City now. And we got Nuke Jersey and Nuke Orleans too, and a few other colourful names for places that we all used to know and love when there was anything worth loving."

"Nuke," the Doctor considered the implications of the word and realised that he had surmised correctly in his earlier assumption of atomic conflict. "A nuclear strike?"

"Strikes," the woman said. "Plural. _Very_ goddamn plural. Every major city in the US was practically ripped apart by the Russian missiles."

Jo decided to put her oar in. "When? How long ago?"

The American woman laughed, but in the darkness it was clear to tell that the laughter was humourless and bitter. "Are you guys for real? You really don't know?"

"Obviously," the Doctor said bluntly. "Or else why ask?"

"How the hell is there anywhere in the world where people don't know about the Cold War?" demanded the woman, the sound of astonishment in her voice clear and genuine.

"Oh, we know about it," the Doctor answered. "But I'm afraid we missed the end. We were in… one of the nuclear test shelters. We were about forty miles underground. The electromagnetic pulse created by the first missile – I assume it was the first – knocked out our television and radio systems."

"Missed all the news," the woman concluded. "I get it. But they send little kids down there too?" She glanced at Jo. "She must've been a toddler when the really serious stuff started happening, when the first genuine nuke threat came out. What's the story there?"

"All life is precious," the Doctor smiled. "Especially young life. People of all ages were selected to try out the shelters. Many families were separated. We don't know where Miss Grant's parents are, or even if they're alive, and so she travels with me for company and protection."

"Little Orphan Annie," said the woman. "Cute."

"So when were the United States attacked?" asked Jo again.

"Sixty-eight," the woman told her. "Though the trouble started way before. You know anything about the Cuban Missile Crisis?" She addressed the question to the Doctor, feeling that Jo would be too young.

"1962," he said. "The Soviet Union had arranged a contract with Cuba to build nuclear missiles. The American government became aware of it and quarantined Cuba."

"Quarantined Cuba my ass," grunted the American woman. "We _tried_ to quarantine Cuba, but the Soviets had deployed troops there. Nobody knows what happened, but our guys took a beating and didn't get up again. President Kennedy threatened to take out Cuba, but Russia fired first. The bombardments came between May and October sixty-eight."

"Only four years ago?" the Doctor observed with concern, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small gadget, which he switched on. "That's impossible," he muttered. He knew the girls would be expecting an explanation for that remark and he looked up. "There's almost no radiation here. This whole area should be a lethal nuclear fall-out zone, but there's only a small residual trace." He went into another pocket and took out a white plastic tube, which he opened. He slipped one of the white pills into his hand and from thence to his mouth, where he chewed and swallowed it. "Here," he said, passing the tube to Jo. "Take one of these and give one to..."

"Officer Connors," said the American woman. "Roseanne. Uh, Rosie."

"Officer?" asked Jo as she chewed her pill and passed the tube in the darkness, feeling for the other woman's hand.

"NYPD," said Rosie, taking the tube. "What are these?"

"Experimental drugs," the Doctor lied about the synthetic anti-radiation drugs whose formula he had acquired from the Thal people in a different nuclear aftermath a long time ago. Rosie would never believe the tales of Skaro. "They reduce the effects of radiation sickness."

"You got a cure for cancer too?" asked Rosie, chewing a pill. "Hey, these things taste kinda nice. Like maybe raspberries."

"The flavouring makes them a bit easier to take," the Doctor said, proud of his simple modification to the Thal medicine. "Are we going to stand on this staircase all day?"

Rosie gave a long, heavy sigh. "Who am I kidding that I got any authority anyway? Wherever you guys are going, can I come?" She picked up her gun, confident that it made no difference whether she carried it or not, and slotted it back into its holster.

The Doctor stepped in front of her and reactivated his torch. "I was hoping you'd ask," he smiled as he continued his descent. "We'd appreciate having someone around who knows the territory better than we do."

"Some territory," shrugged Rosie. "Hey, Orphan Annie, you want someone to hold your hand? You look about ready to shit."

Jo was shocked by the American's bluntness. "What?"

Rosie smiled. "Bit coarse for ya, huh? Sorry honey. You look a little scared. More than a little."

"The stairs seem a bit rickety," Jo nodded.

"They're shot to hell," agreed Rosie, scaring the living daylights out of Jo. She saw the young girl's face turn white and offered her hand again. "Hey," she said softly. "It's okay. I'll get you down. What's your name, kid?"

"Jo," said Jo, taking the hand. "Jo Grant."

"Cute," Rosie smirked. "Beats the jack outta Orphan Annie. Don't think about the stairs, okay? The less you think about 'em, the less they can scare you."

Jo nodded, squeezing Rosie's hand in irrepressible terror as she followed the brash Yank and the Doctor down the stairs.

**II**

**STATUES WITHOUT EYES**

"Nico!" Joey hollered across the yard as he slammed the door of the pickup and turned around to look for the man he was calling. "Nico! Come on. We don't got all day!"

A short, swarthy guy with a thick moustache and bushy black hair bunched up in a backtied headband dashed out from behind one of the sheds, kicking up snow and struggling with the zip on his jeans. "Where's the fire, amigo?" he demanded. "I was trying to take a leak!"

Joey leaned against the cab of the truck, sweating and panting for breath. "Julio's dead," he announced without ceremony. Anyone could see he'd been hit pretty hard by that. "Cops got him."

Nico looked anguished. "They shot him?" he gibbered. Then he ran to the truck and kicked the bumper so hard that it rattled. "Goddamn pigs, man!" he whined.

"Take it easy, Nico," Joey said calmly, patting his friend's back. "We're gonna get that pig. I just picked up some junk from one of the old stations, stuff the cops seized back in the day. Reckon it's gonna lead us to something a bit more serious."

Nico scowled angrily. "It better be good," he said. "Good enough for me to really squeeze some heavy crap outta the pig that iced my little brother."

Joey nodded. "Helmets," he replied, waving his hands for emphasis. "Shoulder armour, body packs, boots. Some other shit that I can't even begin to figure out. Trent could do it though. He knows all that Star Trek crap."

"We could try some of that stuff ourselves," Nico agreed. "Go take our revenge on the cops."

"Maybe do better than that," smirked Joey. "Maybe with a little of that junk we might get into the Compound, take a little more from right under the Russkis' noses. Then we can get as many guys into the armour as will fit and take back America!"

"Oww!" squeaked Nico in a Michael Jackson way, and he high-fived Joey.

Joey walked around the back of the truck, undid the bolts and pulled down the tailgate before whipping away the tarpaulin. "Get a look at it."

Nico hopped up into the truck and looked at the mess of bits and pieces littering the space around the machine gun tripod. There were metal gauntlets designed to cover whole forearms, semi-complete battle helmets, huge boots and other bits and pieces, as well as some boxes and wires and one or two things that might have been guns. He nudged one of the scrap parts with his boot. "Seems pretty light," he noticed. "Think it could keep the bullets off?"

"Like I said," replied Joey. "Gotta get it to Trent."

Trent Garner lived in a train. An underground train. The subway system didn't work anymore, long wrecked by the bombardment of New York, and plenty of refugees had taken trains and used them as homes. Trent's train had quite a few carriages and he'd made them as luxurious as possible, gutting them and filling them with looted furniture and carpets. He'd even rigged a working shower and flushing toilets and with help from a few of the girls converted one carriage into a small cafeteria. Most of the carriages were laboratory cars though, Trent having been a scientist before the bombardments, and he spent his time analysing salvaged enemy gear and trying to figure out how it worked. It was nothing like anything he'd ever seen, the little that had been brought to him by the Daylighters, but he was determined to crack it. None of the electronics worked since the bombardment but someone had brought back a piece of machinery a while ago and Trent had managed to work out that it was some sort of transformer that adapted things to work in spite of the EMP. He'd ripped out some of the subway's power cables and rigged up the transformer, and ever since then he'd had lighting, heating and even a few working computers. He hadn't been able to get any of the trains moving, though. Steam powered all the vehicles that were still in use nowadays. Trent had adapted most of the currently used cars and vans himself. He was staring into a computer through his wire-rimmed glasses and only just noticed the mug of coffee being laid on the desk beside him. "Not on the desk, Clare," he complained without looking up. "I've told you before, I'll elbow it over." He vaguely registered Clare taking it away to put it on the little shelf a couple of feet behind him. "I think I can rig this for analytical data storage," he said, more to himself than to anyone else. "I could keep records of everything I discover and use logic to extrapolate anything I can't figure out for myself. I could make real progress with the Soviet tech."

"Sure," said Clare, not really caring. "Any chance you can invent something that'll give us a little sunshine? A whole city of fashion stores to loot and there isn't even bikini weather on Miami Beach."

"You were ten years old the last time someone wore a bikini on Miami Beach," Trent grunted. "How the hell can you know what it's like?"

"Doesn't mean I wouldn't ever wanna try it," Clare retorted. "Geez, dad. I probably got the best body in America and I can't show it off because I can't even go to the john without a parka."

Trent sighed and looked sadly at his daughter. She was right. In six weeks it would be her twenty-third birthday and she had a figure that model photographers of the old days would not be the only ones to lust after, and he knew she ached to do what the girls in all those old tapes did that she watched on the nation's only working VCR. "I wish we could get a little sunshine too, honey, and I make do with you."

Clare stooped and kissed her father's head. "Don't forget your coffee."

For a moment, Trent watched her leave, disappearing into one of the other carriages, and then he reached for the coffee cup. As always, in a single violent swig he downed the near-boiling hot liquid and then slammed the mug down on the shelf before returning to his work. A sudden vibration coursed through the fat of his backside and for a moment he was startled, but as the radio buzzed again he realised that was what it was and took it out of the back pocket of his trousers. "Joey?" he said into the microphone, knowing exactly who was calling.

"Yo Trent," the voice buzzed back through the rough static, immature as ever. "We got some shit for ya. Think it may be the new Russki stuff. You wanna see?"

Trent grimaced. "Of course I want to see, idiot," he snapped. "Or don't you think it's worth me trying to do something about America's problems?"

"Don't wet your pants, man," Joey Day protested. "The Trash Collector's bringing home some good garbage today. I'm on my way down Fifth in the truck. Gonna be at your stop in about a half-hour. You gonna be awake?"

"I had coffee," Trent answered dourly. "Don't worry about me. Just get your ass over here with that stuff." Without waiting for an answer, he cut the radio. It buzzed again but he took out the batteries.

The Doctor switched off the torch as he, Jo and Rosie stepped out into the natural light of day, if it could be called any such thing. The bright glare of the dour sky's reflection in the brilliant snow dazzled the eyes and made the task of taking in the vista somewhat painful to execute. Shading his eyes with a hand, the Doctor marched out onto the crisp sheet of snow. Liberty Island was a complete mess, with chunks of rubble lying around from where the Statue had been damaged in some way and a few half-buried boats that had been hauled up onto the island out of the iceberg-strewn water and later abandoned. The boats were rusty and broken and covered in snow, and the Doctor stared past them toward mainland America. It didn't look much better. "How do we get across to the mainland?" he asked, hearing Rosie and Jo trudge up behind him.

"How'd you get here in the first place?" asked Rosie. "The only boat I've seen come here besides mine is the one I've been following. That's why I tried to arrest you guys earlier. Figured you might be the crew. You're off my list now, though. There's no way you're anything to do with what's going on here. You don't know enough."

"Thank you," said the Doctor. "And we're not sure how we got here," he said carefully, not sure what to tell the cop. "It's all a bit hazy."

"Drugged, huh?" Rosie nodded. "That makes sense. They probably drug everybody they take."

"They?"

"People smugglers. That's why I came over here. We've been getting calls from some of the small families dotted around the cities saying that family members and friends are disappearing, and some witnesses said uncharted boats were seen heading up in this direction via the Brooklyn Bridge. No one normally comes up here. The waters are too dangerous."

"So you watched the Bridge and saw a boat moving into Liberty Island," the Doctor concluded. "And you came to investigate."

"Yeah," Rosie nodded. "I took my partner, but I lost him in the dark. I heard him scream. Figured that the people-smugglers killed him."

"People-smuggling," the Doctor murmured, brushing his bottom lip with the tip of a finger. "I wonder." He glanced at Rosie. "You said you had a boat?"

Rosie started marching off through the snow, gently pulling Jo behind her like a mother leading a child to school on a wintry day. "Come on," she said firmly. "I know some guys who'd really like to meet you."

The Doctor followed her down to a small mooring area where the ice and snow had been cleared, with a flamethrower by the look of it, and there was a large patch of open asphalt and a fixed rope ladder hanging down to the water. "All proper access to the island is cut off, then?" the Doctor observed as Rosie carefully helped a trembling Jo onto the ladder.

"Yeah," Rosie replied. "It's been hit pretty bad. No one knows why, but maybe three or four months after they established themselves in what's left of New York, the Russkis came out to the island and mined it with explosives. Made it pretty hard for anyone to get to the Statue."

"It must be important to them for some reason," the Doctor mused. "Perhaps I should go back and take another look." He turned in the direction of the Statue and started to walk back toward it.

Something fired at him. He jumped clear of the blast quickly and a chunk of snow erupted a couple of feet from him.

"Doctor!" Jo screamed.

The Doctor ran for the ladder and swung onto it as another shot was fired and the snow was thrust skyward once again. Jo clambered awkwardly down to the boat with the Doctor catching up from above, and Rosie followed last. Rosie planted her feet on the deck and ran for the cabin of the small powerboat. "We gotta move," she snapped. "Fast. The people smugglers musta left a guard."

"How does this boat work?" asked the Doctor. "Surely after a nuclear explosion the resulting EMP will have knocked out all the electrics." He followed Rosie into the cabin.

"It's not electric," said Rosie. "Not anymore." She pulled the large iron lever protruding from the front of the huge oven-like contraption that had been cobbled up and lashed into the boat's drive systems. There was a massive metallic growl from somewhere below and a cloud of steam whooshed up all around the boat, obscuring it from the vision of the Statue's guard as the small vessel sped away.

The Doctor was highly impressed. "It's been converted to high-pressure steam power!" he exclaimed delightedly, his face a broad grin. "Rather reminds me of my childhood dreams of being a train driver!"

"You kinda got me as the type," smirked Rosie. "We've fixed whatever vehicles we can find this way. Even some of the cars have got steam engines on 'em. Just because transistors and circuits don't work anymore doesn't mean we stop altogether. We just gotta find other ways."

"Of course, my dear," the Doctor nodded. "Ever-reliable human determination and ingenuity." He eagerly examined the controls. "Where are we making for?"

"Battery Park," Rosie told him. "Know it?"

"Indeed I do," the Doctor smiled back and then gestured at the controls. "May I?"

Rosie nodded. "Sure. I'm gonna go check on Jo anyway. She seems a little sick."

"Probably the radiation," the Doctor observed as he took hold of a lever in each hand. "Her tablet should start working soon." He pulled one of the levers very slightly, adjusting the boat's course and peering out of the window, watching closely for icebergs.

"Doctor," a familiar voice said from behind him.

But it was Rosie who answered. "We gotta get you some warmer clothes, honey," she told Jo. "You stand around in that tiny little skirt much longer and you'll freeze to death. Sure, your legs look great, but that's no epitaph."

Jo staggered into the cabin and almost fell onto the Doctor, clinging to him. She was pale and breathless. "Doctor… the Statue…"

The Doctor nodded, glancing back for a second at the monument. It was a wreck, the golden flame of the torch shattered and hollow, the face disfigured. "I wonder why they gouged out the eyes," he murmured. "And why in that particular shape?"

"The Statue," Jo pressed urgently, fighting to get him to hear her. "The TARDIS is still inside."

Then she collapsed.

_**To be continued…**_


	2. Episode 2

**Doctor Who**

**BACKWINTER**

**By Alex Lee Rankin**

Olya Tamashevska hated these meetings. The Board creeped her out. They treated the whole situation in such a business-like fashion, concentrating on the facts and figures and letting nothing else come into the equation, and their look wasn't exactly chic either. Putting her clipboard under her arm, she allowed herself to be handcuffed to the guard. She hated that too, but it was procedure. There were so many rules and regulations about this place that made it near-impossible even for the people who worked there to actually get at the Project. Guards went with staff everywhere they went when they left their offices and stayed with them until they returned to their designated places. They even handcuffed Tamashevska when she went to the lavatory. At least she was allowed a female guard for the lavatory trips. She didn't really like the idea of anyone standing outside her cubicle and having to listen as she urinated but it was a small comfort that the person who shared that indignity with her would be sympathetic about it. Naturally they didn't socialise; for one the Board frowned on such things (if 'frowned' could be in any way deemed the correct term) and for another their forced intimacy created awkwardness. Tamashevska blotted out the thought as the guard currently cuffed to her started marching off briskly, practically dragging her off her feet. She was a tiny woman and the guards here were all enormous brutes, even the one who took her to the toilet, and the best way to keep up with them was usually to take her feet off the ground and allow herself to be carried. Barely tip-toeing, she skittered along the corridor in the wake of the burly guard and finally was allowed to halt at the end of the cul-de-sac central corridor in front of the massive dark green square bulkhead that protected the boardroom. The guard saluted the two guards on the bulkhead door. Like they'd care. One of the door guards reached out a hand, not saying a word, and waited. Tamashevska's escort gave him a very special identity card and allowed it to be examined and then returned. "Professor Tamashevska for the attention of the Board of Executors," the escort announced stoutly.

"Enter," the guard on the door said, stepping aside along with his comrade and activating the bulkhead release in the usual way. The bulkhead slid forward about a foot and then moved ten feet to the right, revealing a perfect square recess, ten feet by ten feet, in the wall beyond. Set into the recess at its centre was a simple door with a doorstep. It looked just like the front door of an ordinary suburban house, and therefore ludicrous amidst the trappings of the Project. Tamashevska's escort released her and she wrung her wrist to rub out the discomfort. He stood there, gun trained on her, as she stepped up onto the doorstep, took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. Another guard answered the door and she stepped in without a word passing between them. She carried on down the short red-wallpapered hallway until she reached the wood-panelled double doors of the boardroom and opened them without ceremony.

"Ah, Professor Tamashevska," said the Director of Projects. "Come in and sit down. You'd like some refreshment?"

"More drugs, I suppose?" asked Tamashevska dourly.

The Director smiled, the expression seeming lost on him, forced and unreal as if it were more a shadow of something he used to do than anything he really felt. "Not at all, Professor. Some tea and perhaps a biscuit, or would you prefer coffee?"

Tamashevska grimaced. The Englishman was no friend of the Soviet Union and yet he seemed to be the keystone of the whole operation. She didn't trust this Westerner – though that was personal. She wasn't nearly as prejudiced as her Soviet paymasters. She just wanted peace and the chance of a normal life. But this man was something else. He was too much of a mystery. She didn't like him at all, not one little bit in fact. "I'd prefer," she answered honestly, "to make my report and leave. May I?"

"Everyone's here," the Director said smoothly, though he rasped a little. "Why not?"

Tamashevska looked around the boardroom table at the semi-circle of grisly faces, all as displaced and abnormal as that of the Director, and sat in the only empty chair, the one that was always reserved for her and no one else. She put her clipboard flat on the table and examined her notes to remind herself of what she intended to say. "There has been an increase of fourteen per cent in the ratio of subjects to failures," she reported flatly. "That now sets the bar of that ratio at sixty-eight per cent. The costs are becoming higher, Director."

"Only the life costs, surely," said one of the other Executors. "Everything else is stable."

"And the life costs are the least significant of this project's expenditures?" snapped Tamashevska. "I thought that the whole purpose of this project was to assist the human race in its survival. I am a surgeon, for God's sake. I'm only taking part in this because I've been told that these advancements could prolong human life even at a near-death stage."

Another Executor raised a hand and looked like he was a skeleton manipulated by marionette strings doing it. "The cost of life here is small," he said. "Compare the number of lost lives here to the number of lost lives on the surface."

The Director was in full agreement. "Millions are dying above ground, Professor, every day," he reminded her. "A few hundred a week amounts to nothing against that. So yes, the life costs here aren't the biggest of our problems. The dividend must outweigh the sacrifice, or else what value the sacrifice?"

"Your logic, as always Director, is flawless," Tamashevska very nearly spat. She checked the rest of her notes, flipping a page on her clipboard. "The good news is that fluidity of movement is improving, along with responsiveness."

"And the resistance to radiation?" asked the Director, that point always foremost in his mind.

"Better," admitted the Professor. "Twenty-nine per cent better. The surgical procedures heal the superficial damage and the genetic manipulation removes all carcinogens and strengthens the molecular cohesion, as well as the nervous and immune systems."

"Excellent," smiled the Director. He raised a hand in the same puppet-like manner as his comrade, and the guard that had answered the door to Tamashevska (and then locked up and followed her to the Boardroom and ended up standing behind the table) went to the back of the room, returning with another chair and placing it at the end of the table. "The last item on the agenda," announced the Director. "I would like to introduce the latest member of the Board."

The only other door in the room opened – the door behind the table that obviously led to wherever it was the Executors retired to for rest – and a man stepped out. He was wearing a neat dark blue suit and a striped club tie and his hair was short, dark and a little wavy. Tamashevska recognised him instantly despite the usual Board embellishments and was even more perturbed than ever.

**EPISODE TWO**

Jo was grateful for the thick trousers and heavy overcoat that Rosie had given her from the cabin of the boat while the Doctor drove the vessel through the ice field. The boat was pretty amazing. Once upon a time it had obviously been one of those luxury speedboats that old businessmen might buy for their retirement, but now it was different. There were plastic tubes and pumps all over it and it made a churning, bubbling sound as it whizzed through the water. A hydro-powered powerboat. A boat that actually used the very water upon which it sailed as a power source. Jo sat with her hands in the snug pockets of the huge, tightly-fastened coat and nuzzled her chin into its fleece-lined collar. They were almost at the mainland now, coming into the Battery Park complex – what was left of it. That was where Rosie had told him to make for. There was a small NYPD base there where they could rest, get food and hot drinks and make a plan, maybe get a few cops together to try and investigate the Statue further. The Doctor had seemed concerned about the Statue more since he'd left it than when he'd been inside. He'd stared at the face for a moment, at the gouged-out eyes, and then restored his concentration purely to the task of driving the boat. Eventually he pulled the boat into harbour and docked it next to a few other boats, now long abandoned due to their being inoperable, getting up and leaving the cabin. He'd been offered an overcoat too, but he'd refused it. He didn't seem to feel the cold. "Come on, you two," he said to Jo and Rosie. "Let's get into the warm."

Jo took Rosie's hand again, not sure why she was doing it but feeling somehow comforted to have the facility available to her, and allowed herself to be helped onto the jetty in the Doctor's wake. Jo was starting to feel a little livelier now. "Where are we going?" she asked Rosie.

"My place," Rosie replied. "Sorta. NYPD temporary installation. It's a warehouse that stored stuff for one of the big department store, mostly furniture. We got tables, chairs, sofas, drapes, blankets and all kinds. Some of the guys have learned as much as they can about hydroengineering and we've got some flushing toilets and one or two other useful water or steam powered items. Most useful one is an urn that we use to make coffee. You could use a hot cup of coffee, yeah?"

Jo nodded enthusiastically at the prospect of a lovely hot drink. "Yes, I think I could," she agreed.

"And the guys in textiles can make you some better clothes," Rosie added. "Something tailored to fit and also to protect." The Doctor was striding across Battery Park, looking left and right, scanning his surroundings. "What're ya looking for, old timer?" called Rosie.

"Your road transport," the Doctor called back over his shoulder. "You obviously have some." Then he saw it. The police car was pretty impressive. It had clearly originally been an ordinary NYPD squad car, but now its wheels were like small customised steamroller wheels and the bonnet had been ripped off to reveal the engine cavity, which of course contained the copper boiler and brass pipes setup of a steam engine. It was like a cross between a modern car and a George Stephenson prototype. "And it really is rather splendid," he breathed with a deep smile. "I take it the car is ready to go?"

"Oh yeah," Rosie nodded. "Coal's in the trunk, pail's on the back seat." She watched the Doctor as he marched over to the car, opened the boot and picked up the coal scuttle that lay on top of the bed of slag inside. Opening one of the back doors, the Doctor produced the bucket and started filling it with coal. "Hey Doc, what's so interesting about the crazy eyes on the Statue?" asked Rosie.

The Doctor emptied the coal scuttle into the bucket a third time. "You don't happen to know who cut them out in that shape, do you?" he asked. "Only the design is uncomfortably familiar."

"Not a clue," Rosie frowned. "Sorry. What do they remind you of?"

The Doctor's eyes took on a distant look, as if he were feeling a kind of awkward nostalgia. "I'm not sure. It was such a long time ago. Almost another life entirely."

"Twilight Zone fan huh?" nodded Rosie casually. "Well if you remember what it reminds you of, do me a favour and fill me in, would ya? Only it might help me find out what the hell is going on here."

Without another word, the Doctor dropped the coal scuttle in the boot and slammed the canopy down, striding to the front of the car. He found the coal hatch and emptied the bucket into it and then returned the bucket to the back seat. Then he turned to face Rosie and Jo. "May I drive?"

Rosie smirked. "Knock yourself out, train driver. Mind if I smoke? Ain't much else to keep a gal going in a situation like this."

"If you must," the Doctor smiled and opened the passenger door. "Jo?"

"I'll take shotgun, if that's okay with you," Rosie interjected. She smiled wanly at Jo. "Sorry, honey. You get the pail." She indicated the lonely bucket on the back seat.

Jo shrugged. "I'm used to it," she smiled wryly back and pulled open one of the rear doors.

Sitting down in her seat, Rosie cracked open the glove box and produced a pack of cigarettes. She took out a cigarette, put the pack back and took her petrol lighter from her breast pocket. She lit the cigarette as the Doctor clambered into the driving seat. He looked around for an ignition system and couldn't find one. "How do we start the car?" he asked.

Rosie took a pull on her cigarette and then reached under the dashboard. She pulled up a rubber tube that snaked under the dashboard and obviously was connected to the engine. Blowing out a long stream of blue smoke, Rosie said, "You ignite the coal." She flicked hot cigarette ash into the tube, put it over her mouth and blew down it hard. There was a whoosh and a gurgle and then she checked her watch. "Give it a couple of minutes."

The Doctor reclined in his seat and smiled. A few minutes later the copper boiler in the engine berth started to whistle like an old tin kettle on the boil. Taking his cue, he pressed his foot down on the accelerator pedal and the car began to move. "That's very impressive," he smiled as he took the steering wheel. "A remarkable feat of engineering."

"Yeah," nodded Rosie. "When you think the next best thing we have is a coffee urn."

"I could just do with a cup of coffee," the Doctor beamed as he took to the road. "How about you, Jo?" Jo didn't answer, and a glance in the rear view mirror informed him that she had gone to sleep with the coal bucket in her arms.

"She's got her name down for coffee, Doc," said Rosie. "By the way, d'you know what team she plays for?"

The Doctor stuck out his bottom lip. "I've never asked her," he replied honestly. "Why?"

"Nothin'," shrugged Rosie, taking another hit of her smoke. "She's cute is all."

**III**

**REVOLUTION ROULETTE**

Nico didn't like what he was hearing. Joey was really on the edge now; he'd been going that way for a while, to tell the truth. Since Garbage Stu had died in that battle with one of the other local gangs – the fight over the chemicals place – he'd been a little shaky. Garbage Stu had been one of Joey's best boys, always bringing home the bacon, and losing such a valuable player had really pushed Joey close. Then the pigs had nailed Snakey Jake, Pete, Dino, Andre the Faggot and now Julio, and with each loss Joey got worse. He had become obsessed with Trent's experiments in the subway train and now he seemed just to be Trent's errand boy. He'd been the big guy once, the best, and now he was the lackey of some nerd who lived in a hold in the ground. "What's happened to you, man?" Nico demanded of his friend and leader. "Back in the day you didn't give a shit about nobody. Used to shoot your own boys in the legs if they didn't jump when you ordered."

"There was an America back then," said Joey bitterly. He remembered those days too, shifting dope for the blacks and the Colombians, making a thousand bucks a day, getting high whenever he wanted. Even before the drugs he had plenty of stuff going on. He used to own a silver Thunderbird and just cruise the streets picking up any girl he liked the look of, taking her to the local makeout spot with a few bottles of wine and a few of his ma's sleepy pills. Those girls would wake up around noon the next day, wondering what had hit them. "We used to have a nation," he continued to Nico. "There were people in the streets, guys who would stop you in your car to buy a half ounce of dope and girls who'd stop ya just to ask how much you'd take to let 'em sit on the passenger seat. Now what do we have? Snow, snow and more fucking snow. Jeez, if Martin Luther-King had known America was gonna be this white, he'd have shot _himself_ and saved the other asshole a bullet."

Nico shook his head slowly. "Things are pretty bad, I know. The whole country's been covered in snow since '69, and there's been no chance of it letting up..."

"It's not just the snow, Nico," Joey snapped, jamming a cigar into his mouth, biting off the end, spitting it out, turning the cigar around and squeezing it between his teeth again as he fumbled for his scuffed petrol lighter. "If I feel the cold I can just wear two pair of pants. That's not what bothers me. What bothers me is that I ain't seen a pretty girl in maybe eight years, and I've smoked less shit in that time than I used to do in a week. Can't watch TV 'cause there's no TV networks anymore, can't sink a beer 'cause there's no breweries or bars and there aren't enough people to open up a kind of speakeasy, can't go for a walk in the park, can't go see a movie. Hell, even Hollywood's fuckin' gone, man."

Nico had to agree. "Things are pretty messed up, yeah, but Trent, man. Why you gotta work for a nobody like Trent?"

"Because Trent's the only guy in New York who understands how to work anything smarter than a toilet. He knows machines. Maybe he doesn't know the stuff we got in the back of the truck, but there's a chance he could figure it out and then we could use it."

"You got a plan?" asked Nico.

Joey nodded. "Yeah. First we take out the NYPD, then we can break into their store and see if they got any of this Russki stuff." He jerked a thumb backwards to indicate the truck's contents behind them. "Take anything we find and get that back to Trent too. If he can get enough of it to work we can arm our boys and go take the fight to those Russian bastards."

Nico smiled. "Take back America," he said, echoing his friend's earlier sentence. "I hear you, amigo."

Louis had heard the steam engine. That was the second he'd heard this morning, and he carefully opened the door of the washroom a crack. He didn't know why he hid in there, apart of course from the obvious: cowardice. He had his gun but even that didn't make him feel strong enough to back up his claim that this was his territory today. And having to shoot that kid hadn't helped either. Louis didn't even know if he had any bullets left and he didn't even know if having plenty would make him go out and face the source of that engine sound. He felt better the instant he saw it. The source of the sound rolled into view, coming from the harbour side of the Park, heading back to base by the look of it. Louis slammed open the door and ran out, waving his arms. "Hey!" he shouted. "Hey you guys! I need a ride!" His breathing was ragged and his chest was burning and he didn't know what he could do to stop the pains in his guts and legs. The car didn't stop for him. It wasn't a cop driving, that was for sure; Louis had spotted a white-haired man driving it but couldn't see his passengers. A looter had stolen that squad car and he wasn't going to stop for a cop. Louis gave up and fell onto his knees, where he started to cry.

"The cold gets into you, my friend," said a voice from behind him. "The radiation too. Tell me, how have you been feeling lately? Lethargic? Weak? Perhaps a little defeated?"

Louis took the sound in. That was no American standing behind him. Taking a deep, fearful breath, he steeled himself to turn and blow the Russian's head off. But the Russian was obviously armed and already pointing a gun at him. He had no chance. The New York cop dropped his gun in the snow, carefully but awkwardly forced himself onto his feet, raised his hands and turned around slowly. There was indeed a gun pointing right at him, and its owner looked formidable enough the weapon notwithstanding. The Russian was tall and stocky with hands like shovels. He was wearing gauntlets of some kind that vanished into the sleeves of his long, thick black overcoat. The top button of the coat was undone but stuffed with the folds of the scarf wound around the Russian's neck. The Russian had dark hair that looked like it might actually be long but tied at the back and tucked into his turned up collar and there was something not right about his eyes. "What the hell are you people even still doing here?" Louis hissed at him.

The Russian's lip curled only very slightly at one end and having failed to smile he answered the cop's question instead. "Trying to help, believe it or not."

"Bullshit," Louis panted. "If you guys had wanted to help America you'd have done pretty good to keep your goddamn missiles in their silos."

"I'm not with the military," said the Russian. "I carry a gun only for protection. I'm actually a scientist. My name is Konstantin Sayanovich, and I have friends who can help you recover from your condition."

"My condition?" rasped Louis. "My condition is radiation sickness, asshole." He coughed and spluttered as if his body had decided to demonstrate to his captor. "There's no cure."

"There wasn't a cure, no," Konstantin admitted casually. "My organisation has made advances."

"And what's your organisation?"

"A small group of medical researchers dedicated to helping the human race to survive. We are capable of becoming so much more than we are today."

"Spare me the philosophy," coughed Louis. He looked the Russian up and down. Konstantin was mostly covered but his face was full of colour and his hair wasn't falling out. He didn't seem affected by either the snow or the radiation. "They use the cure on you?"

"I'm one example of its success, yes," Konstantin nodded. "Perhaps you'd like to try it?"

Louis shrugged. "Maybe I would. But how do I trust you?"

Konstantin shrugged, indicating that he didn't really care. "You do or you don't," he answered simply. "If you do, you come with me and we try to help you. If you don't, you lie down in the snow here and die." He returned his gun to his shoulder holster under his coat, turned about and ambled casually off.

Louis watched him carefully, waiting for him to get a good few metres away, and then stooped and picked up his gun, still able to feel it touching his left heel. He checked the magazine. Still good for a few shots. This was a military issue handgun and normally cops wouldn't have something like this, but the lack of a military force to fight for America had changed a lot of things just lately. Keeping his gun at the ready, Louis stumbled after the mysterious Russian who had promised to save him from death. A mist was rising in the Park, and that seemed strange to Louis. For a moment he wondered why, and then it occurred to him that there hadn't been any mist or fog in New York for years. You needed warm air for that. Did this Mr Sandwich or whatever his name was have a warm air heater of some kind? And if he did, what was it doing out here? Louis crept cautiously toward the mist, feeling once again uneasy and afraid, thinking about his washroom and how it was safe in there, thinking about having to step over the remains of that kid again. He could see a swirl of black in the mist, the coat of the Russian, and he raised his gun, training it on his self-supposed benefactor's back as he walked on.

Then they appeared.

Russian soldiers. Five of them in full battledress. Louis had heard the survivor stories from the first landing of the Russians on American soil but had always thought them far-fetched, even with the state of things. Now he knew they were true. The Russians really had super-troopers. These guys were like no men Louis had ever seen before and their uniforms were about as creepy as clothes could get. Even the stuff his mother used to wear wasn't as disturbing as what these guys had on. He felt the blood drain from his face and realised his hands were shaking. "Not with the military, huh?" he spat. He fired at the silhouette of Konstantin. The Russian didn't go down. He kept walking away and the soldiers kept coming. Louis realised that his shakes had caused him to miss Konstantin's back. He tried to steady himself to take another shot, but one of the soldiers fired first. Time seemed to slow down for a moment as the soldier's gun flashed and Louis wondered if he'd have time to say one last prayer. He didn't.

Those eyes. Eyes that smouldered, their intense radiance slicing through the optic nerves of the eyes watching her and making them water, but never ever making them want to look away. That skin, glowing with a radiant halo, so soft and smooth and pale. That hair, like freshly-rolled golden hay drying in the afternoon sunshine. The auburn-haired woman came in closer, fingers trembling as she reached out to touch the flaxen-haired girl, who danced teasingly away from her, laughing and blowing a seductive kiss. The redhead chased the blonde youngster, and being trained to run, caught her. The pair fell in the long grass, laughing and rolling. They slowed, stopped, hesitated. A single second seemed to last a day and a night. Eyes of ice blue stared into eyes of more sultry hazel. Lips that trembled like the hands before them were held suspended over younger, sweeter lips. Rosie surrendered to temptation and...

Woke up.

"More coffee?" asked Jo as she sat down on the bench beside her, holding a tray in both hands and making a brave show of smiling. Everything about New York was so bewildering. She had, before this visit, been hoping that it would be, but not in this way. Even this place wasn't what she was expecting. She'd been expecting the base of the NYPD to be a bit more like a proper police station, but apparently no one used the old stations anymore because they made easy targets. Now all the cops lived and slept in old warehouses like these, crashing on anything that would hold their weight and keep them warm. This group, Rosie's group, had got lucky. They had found an old furniture warehouse belonging to a manufacturer that supplied beds to the big department stores. There were beds, sofas, tables, blankets, curtains and other various textiles everywhere, and at least some basic physical comfort could be afforded. Rosie normally slept in a small cabin bed near the back of the first floor storage unit, but after the day she'd had, as soon as they'd arrived in the base she'd dropped onto a well-worn leather upholstered sofa in one of the corridors and drifted off. Jo had elected to leave her to rest, as she looked as though she needed it. Rosie had been pretty once, Jo could see, with nice dark orange hair and light blue eyes, her skin almost the colour of pale rose. Maybe that colouring had been the reason for her mother's choice of name for her, like Snow White. But that nice hair was a lank, greasy mop, the eyes cloaked in shadows, the skin parched. This woman really needed a bath, and Jo wondered if there might be anywhere she could get one.

"Thanks babe," Rosie said with a short smile, breaking Jo's train of thought as she took a mug of the steaming black coffee that one of the other officers had boiled up in massive urns to distribute around the base. "You okay?"

Jo nodded. "I'm trying to be. I really wasn't expecting New York to be like this."

Rosie sipped at the coffee and swore as it burned her lip. She glanced apologetically at Jo. "So, what were you expecting New York to be?" she asked. "Sunny skies, lunchtime shopping, guys in Chevys driving by, shouting about how great your legs are?"

"I suppose," Jo shrugged.

"Yeah, well those days are gone, sweetheart," Rosie said with a long sigh. She blew on the surface of her coffee, causing it to ripple calmingly as it cooled. "The Big Apple's rotten to the core now. I'll tell ya you got great legs though." And she gave a wry smile, tingling as Jo giggled. "Nice way to cover 'em up, by the way."

Jo glanced down at her outfit. Rosie had asked someone to take the girl's measurements and get them to the staff tailor as soon as they had arrived at the station. She wore cream linen trousers and a jacket made from russet velvet curtain with a cotton blouse beneath. "I look like the Doctor," she chuckled.

As if summoned by the very mention of his name, the Doctor suddenly appeared through the double doors that led from the corridor into the open-plan area that had been banged together into a makeshift office and operations room. "Actually," he declared, "your Big Apple has a maggot in it. A maggot that's worming its way down to the core, and we've got to stop it getting there before it poisons the whole of America." How he'd been able to hear the girls' discussion from the office no one knew.

Rosie stood up. "What are you saying?" she asked urgently.

"I've been asking around in here," said the Doctor. "You didn't tell me the Russian military had an actual presence in New York."

"They're all over the country, Doctor," Rosie confirmed. "Sorry I didn't mention it sooner. We were kind of under pressure. Now what was this about poisoning America? We're already poisonous as hell. We're nuked."

"That's what worries me," said the Doctor. "The bombardments only stopped four years ago following six years of non-stop attacks. This entire country should be brimming with fallout. There shouldn't be anyone alive here, and yet here you all are in the middle of a nuclear winter that seems to have come early and dissipated the radiation to an almost negligible level almost overnight."

"But that's good, isn't it?" asked Jo. "It means that all these poor Americans have survived and have a chance of surviving longer."

The Doctor shook his head. "If only it were as simple as that, Jo," he said. "No. The lack of radiation isn't just a freak stroke of luck. There's simply no way that it can have cleared naturally. Someone has drained it from the atmosphere."

Rosie rubbed her cheeks. "Doctor, that's impossible. We don't have the technology to do that. Even before the attacks we didn't have the technology to do that."

"Someone does," said the Doctor. "Someone has found a way around the electromagnetic pulse's effects and built machines that collect up radioactive particles to use as a means of generating power."

"How the hell can you know that?" sighed Rosie.

"Because I know how it's done," the Doctor replied matter-of-factly. "Now, I've got to find out who's doing this and stop them."

Rosie stood up. "You want to stop people clearing America of deadly radiation? What are you, crazy?"

"I assure you, Officer Connors," said the Doctor sternly, "that whoever is taking that radiation is doing so for no good reason. Besides, the radiation won't come back if I shut off the machines; it'll just dissipate more gradually."

"And how many more people will die with the machines off than on?"

"I have a feeling actually fewer will die."

"Yeah? And how d'you figure that?"

"Whoever's taking that radiation is making power, and they aren't using it to run the streetlamps, the factory equipment, the television and radio networks. With that much radiation available to them they should be able to generate enough electricity to power the restoration of America, so why isn't America getting it?"

Rosie got the message. She sighed heavily. "Because they don't give a damn about us. When they've finished here if anyone's still alive the Russkis will kill 'em anyway." She looked up at the Doctor with anger in her eyes. "This is some kind of experiment, isn't it? America's been used as a nuclear test site and now it's the test site for an anti-radiation system. That's what they nuked us for, to have a large land mass to try their new invention out on."

"I'm afraid it does look that way," admitted the Doctor. "Although I've reason to believe there's a much more sinister motive behind the nuclear attacks than that."

"What reason?" asked Jo.

"The face of the Statue," said the Doctor.

**IV**

**CRAZY TRAIN**

"I'm outside door sixteen!" shouted Joey, his voice echoing down the subway station and into the darkness of the tunnel. There was still no reply. "Trent? Trent!" He kicked door sixteen hard, knowing he wouldn't be able to open it. Those hydros Trent had put on the doors locked them up tight, and with good reason. Nobody wanted the Crazy Train penetrated. There was too much valuable work going on in there. Joey glanced at Nico. "Gimme the radio again." He grabbed the radio from his friend's hand and pressed the button. "Trent," he snapped into the microphone condenser. "Let us in man, we're freezing our goddamn balls off out here. I swear I just heard Nico's drop out of his pants and roll into the tunnel."

Finally the radio crackled into life. "What is it, Joey?" said the woman's voice.

"Clare?" asked Joey. "That you babe?"

"You call me babe one more time and it'll be your nuts rolling into the tunnel," Clare Garner snapped the reply. "What do you want?"

"I got some shit for your dad," Joey told her. "Shit like he's never seen before. I think it might be related to the cure."

The radio went dead. Joey and Nico waited, listening. There was a clack and a rattle from behind door sixteen as the padlock was taken off. Jets of steam hissed loudly from either side of the door at floor level and the doors slid open to reveal the short, plain girl with scrubby blonde hair tied fiercely back into a bun and clothes that were tidy but had clearly seen better days. "Show me," she said.

Joey shook his head. "Nuh-uh sweetcheeks. This is for Trent."

"Dad's working," Clare said.

"So he's in his office, huh?" grinned Joey, barging past her and almost knocking her over with the huge and packed holdall bag over his shoulder. "C'mon Nico let's go see him." Nico pushed past Clare too, also winding her with his bag.

"This better be good," Clare barked as she pulled the lever to close the doors and marched down the train after the two men.

Joey stopped and glanced over his shoulder. "Honey," he said deliberately to annoy her, "this is gonna be the best."

Trent looked up as the blue bag was dumped on the workspace in front of him and found himself staring at the scarred, stubbly face of Joey Day. "It's in here?" he asked.

"What did you want, an armoured car escort?" asked Joey. "I gotta disappoint you, Doc. We don't have any of those." He reached for the zip. "What we do have is this."

Trent stared at the bag's contents. He reached in and started to unpack bits and pieces, examining them with all the haste that accompanied his total fascination. "These are surgical pieces," he breathed as he looked at some items.

"Yeah," said Joey. "We think they might have something to do with the way they cure people of the radiation."

"We can't be sure they are curing anyone," Trent reminded the gangster. "Nobody who ever had the cure ever came home. It was only in the underground papers and we don't know who circulates those. It could all be propaganda."

"But plenty of people aren't as sick as they should be, right?" asked Nico from behind Joey as he dumped his bag on the floor. "You did those tests and you said there isn't that much fallout no more, like somebody swept it up."

"That is true," nodded Trent. "But we don't know if that's linked directly to anyone who's recovered. We had a few recoveries in places where I have contacts, but they were just strong people. There wasn't any surgery undertaken. They only got minor doses of radiation, not much more than you'd get from a standard medical X-ray examination, and they were some of the fittest people. Maybe they got a skin cancer at most, and anyone who did can just have that removed by any backstreet surgeon working from home. That's not evidence of a miracle cure." He looked at the bits on the table in front of him. "But this…"

Joey picked one of the items up. He couldn't work out for the life of him what it was. "You think you can do anything with it?"

Trent shrugged. "Maybe. I'm gonna need to spend some quality time getting to know it."

"Take all the time you want," Joey replied. "It's yours. You can't pay me and I need this stuff working, so just don't let me down, right?"

"I'll do my best," Trent promised. "I'll forget to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom."

Clare groaned. "Great. Another hungry, smelly insomniac to take care of."

Trent rounded on his daughter. "Clare, this could be the breakthrough we need," he said urgently. "I have to check this out. It could save lives. Millions of lives. It could save America."

"There's no America anymore, dad," Clare retorted. "You're fighting a lost cause there."

"Well human survival's not a lost cause," Trent reminded her. "If I'd ever been capable of believing that I'd never have become a doctor in the first place."

Clare sighed. "I'm gonna leave you to play with your toys." She looked at Joey and Nico. "Use the bathroom if you need it and then get out," she said to Joey. "Babe."

The detector had taken quite some time to finish, and several tests had proven it somewhat useless in the nuclear winter conditions. It had only been because of the Doctor's knowledge of alien engineering gleaned from time spent with many different civilisations that he'd finally been able to get around the problem. With the best bits and pieces that the NYPD could offer, which weren't much, he'd finally managed to knock up a device that would be able to work out the location of the machines that were draining away New York's radioactive contamination. It looked like a hair dryer with a couple of spoons poking out of the nozzle but he was sure it would lead him to whoever – or whatever – was behind this. Memories were beginning to creep back to him now, as he concentrated hard on the strange shape of the gouged-out eyes of the Statue of Liberty. There were faces that weren't faces, teardrops from men who never cried, zombies and lightning bolts and… and death. Death that wasn't death followed somehow by life that wasn't life, the worst kind of anthropological paradox. The Doctor feared it but couldn't give it a name. Did it begin with an S? Perhaps. It was on the fringes of his mind and wouldn't come in, and he was too afraid to creep out and get a proper look at it. But his courage was building and he would see it soon enough. He was aware of a figure in his periphery for a moment and looked up. "Oh, hallo Jo," he half-smiled. "Don't you have any jobs to do?"

"I was wondering if you'd like another cup of coffee," Jo Grant smiled sweetly back. "I've been reduced to the rank of servant girl yet again."

"No thank you, Jo," the Doctor said kindly. "I think I've had my fill of coffee. It's a shame they don't keep a stock of tea. It's just not as popular in America. I'm not asking for Darjeeling, a supermarket's own brand teabag would do nicely."

Jo giggled. "We all have our little comforts." She looked at the odd-looking machine the Doctor was now picking up off the small workbench in the little workshop one of Rosie's colleagues had managed to clear out and set up for him. "I take it you can guess what I'm going to ask next."

The Doctor pointed the device out as if he were the New York cop with a gun and Jo a feisty villain. "This is a radiation detector of sorts," he explained. "Rather than search for the radiation itself it searches for disruptions and weaknesses in the radiation, so it should be able to locate the areas where it's the most dispersed."

"And that should lead to what's dispersing it," Jo concluded.

"That's the idea, Jo," the Doctor nodded. "It's in the best working order I can manage for the moment, so I suggest we get started. Will Officer Connors be joining us?"

Jo nodded. "She asked me to let her know the moment you were ready. There's a reconditioned police van outside, the station wagon they call it, and there's a team of six police officers plus Rosie ready to go."

"Hmm," the Doctor sighed. "I'm still not happy with her insistence upon bringing team of officers with her. They'll all be putting themselves in terrible danger."

"Well they're hardly better off in their present situation, are they?" Jo reminded him. "At least if they risk their lives for this raid on the enemy base they'll be doing something."

The Doctor shrugged. "I hope they all live to appreciate the gravity of their decision." He crossed the workshop and opened the door. "Let's go and tell her we're ready to move."

Jo hesitated in the doorway. "Doctor?"

"Hm?"

"What was it about the holes in the face of the Statue that you found familiar?"

The Doctor seemed to gaze into space, as if searching for the answer. "I'm not sure, Jo," he said quietly. "But I know when I remember I'm not going to be particularly happy. I think the planet Earth, at least this version of it, is looking at a very bleak future indeed."

"Can't be much bleaker than things are now," Jo reasoned.

"Don't be too sure," the Doctor told her.

Konstantin Sayanovich finished his cigarette and threw the glowing butt into the snow before knocking on the door. A couple of the soldiers were carrying the limp, unconscious body of Louis Hayes and had gathered in a rough arc around the door of the small building. It was one of the points of access used by the maintenance workers who had once been the behind-the-scenes magicians of the old place, making all the clever tricks work. _Adventureland_ didn't have any clever tricks anymore. Rollercoaster rails loomed over the snow-covered ground, gaunt and rusted, their lines broken in several places. Even the Skyliner was now a wreck, its carriages lying crashed and shattered on their sides, half-buried in snow and ice. There had been a time when families had flocked to Long Island to try out the popular amusements and entertain bored children on their summer break from school, but now even the most courageous child would not dare set foot within the park's perimeter. A few months after the bombardments had stopped and the sudden winter had driven everyone who survived into hiding, packs of stray dogs had taken up residence there, using the place as a shelter and a base from which to breed and hunt for what little food they could find. There was little food to come by in those dark times and usually the dogs ended up staging bizarre to-the-death fights, the loser finishing up as dinner. They also ate any of their number who died of things like hypothermia or accidents involving the unstable structures in the park. There weren't even any dogs there now, all driven out by the new inhabitants. Konstantin took the key from around his wrist and unfastened the padlock, then opened the doors and ushered his soldiers through with Hayes before joining them. The doors were closed again and padlocked on the inside using the same lock that had hung on the outside. Konstantin looked at his waiting troops. "What are you standing there like a bunch of spare parts for?" he demanded. They didn't answer and he hadn't honestly expected them to. "Take him down to the Killing Floor."

As the soldiers obeyed, Konstantin lit another cigarette.

"I've no idea why you still smoke, Mr Sayanovich," a smooth English voice said from somewhere in the shadows at the end of the short corridor. "Since the surgery your body is as capable of enjoying them as it is of getting cancer from them."

"Old habits die hard," Konstantin shrugged. "And you can talk. Is that a cigar I smell?"

One of the shadows in the corridor detached itself from the others and moved toward him into the dim glow of the small lamps, their light picking out the shape of his face in a way that made him seem mysterious, sinister and eerie. And he was smoking a cigar. "Ah yes," he smiled. "But I haven't had the treatment, have I?"

"Were you thinking of getting it?" asked Konstantin. "I recommend it. It's literally changed the way I live my life. Haven't been for a shit in two years. I used to hate doing that."

"I don't think I'll put my name down just yet, no."

"You're the boss."

"Yes. Yes I am." The Boss looked back down the corridor toward the small work area he used, the place Konstantin called the Killing Floor, where Louis Hayes had been taken. "Who's our latest guest?"

"Sergeant Louis Hayes," Konstantin told him. "A member of the all but defunct New York Police Department. I found him in an outhouse in the grounds of a small industrial complex at Battery Park. There were other police there, or at least someone who had one of the police cars. The car was on the move and I wasn't able to catch up with it."

"It doesn't matter," said the Boss. "Did you track the others?"

"I watched them for about seven hours before I found the cop. Their base is another abandoned factory area not far from Battery Park, but they have a contact near one-oh-three and visited him earlier today. On my way back from there I remembered the shoot-out with the cop they'd had before they paid that visit and figured he might still be there."

"Very astute of you. Do the Daylighters have the misappropriated equipment?"

"I made sure they got it and they have no idea that they have a benefactor. Mr Day assumes, as per your instructions, that he just got lucky."

"Excellent." The Boss took a few puffs on his cigar. "Now all I need is the final ingredient. Get back out there, Konstantin, and keep looking for the Doctor. Let me know at once if there are any sightings. I'll be on the Killing Floor." And he left Konstantin to his duties, marching briskly back down the corridor. He knew Konstantin would obey his order and continue surveillance, but he was still concerned. His best specimen had recently started to behave erratically, and that was not good. Konstantin was dedicated to the cause but it was obvious he was unsure of his master's motives. Perhaps a little gentle persuasion would be called for a little later on. But first there was other work to do. He stepped into the small room that had been haphazardly converted into an operating theatre and approached Louis Hayes, who was strapped down on the table, now conscious and sweating with fear. "Where…" he slurred. "Where am I?"

"Oh how disappointing," the Boss said coolly. "I was rather hoping for a more original and imaginative response to your sudden observation of new surroundings."

Louis looked around at the others standing around the table. "Who the hell are these guys?" he croaked. "They're Russian soldiers, right?"

"No," said the Boss. "They are my assistants. You may call them Cybermen. They're going to help me perform some surgery on you, once you've been anaesthetised." He stepped up to the operating table and glared into the cop's eyes.

Louis stared up and his blood ran cold in his veins, colder than the snow and ice of dead America had ever made it. "What the fuck are you?" he breathed.

"I am the Master," his captor said. "And you will obey me."

_**To be continued…**_


	3. Episode 3

**Doctor Who**

**BACKWINTER**

**By Alex Lee Rankin**

"Cybermen," the Doctor said.

To Jo there was something in the way he said it, in the tone or the inflection, that suggested he did not like the word one little bit. It was as though that one particular word felt so unclean in his mouth that saying it made him feel physically sick. The look on his face as he said it wasn't great either. For a moment Jo wondered if she should dare to repeat it, just to prompt an explanation, and she was at odds to choose, torn between whether or not its utterance would offend him.

Rosie was driving the truck. She didn't have the scruples of Josephine Grant. "Cybermen," she said aloud. "Doesn't sound too cool."

"Oh, they're about as 'cool' as it's possible to get," the Doctor retorted, his eyes fixed on empty space and his expression grim and full of anger. "They're completely cold. Colder than anything you can possibly imagine."

"So they wouldn't be far out of place in a nuclear winter, huh?" snorted Rosie. "They come here for the climate?"

The Doctor scowled at her, his attention finally attracted by her levity. "This isn't a joke, you know," he reproached her.

Rosie nodded, keeping her eyes on the snow-laden road. They were going to Long Island, following the trace picked up by the Doctor's hair-dryer-and-spoons contraption. "No," she said sincerely. "I'm sorry. You gonna tell me what exactly Cybermen are?"

The Doctor was once again staring into space. "Cybermen," he said, "are a perversion of human evolution. They are what Man, if he continues in his vain search for immortality, is in danger of becoming."

Jo glanced at the Doctor. "Human? You mean they aren't alien?"

The Doctor sighed. "The Cybermen were once human in all but name," he explained. "They lived on the planet Mondas, and therefore by name they were Mondasian, but they are genetically as much members of the genus Homo Sapiens as any one of you, or rather they were."

"So what changed them?"

"I'm not sure," the Doctor answered. "I've always meant to study up on the history of Mondas. The popular theory is that the Mondasians wanted to live forever and in order to pursue that dream they explored the potential benefits of cybernetics."

"Machine and organic parts working together, you mean?"

"Exactly, Jo. They started much like the human race did, with pacemakers and hearing aids, things like that, but as time went on their science improved and they became capable of replacing the entire cardiovascular system with a mechanical one. Weak flesh and blood limbs could be easily amputated and replaced by mechanical ones."

"So they're some kinda robot, right?" asked Rosie, trying to make sense of the Doctor's strange and barely believable explanation. "But also somehow human?"

The Doctor cut her off. "They're not human," he said. "And they're not robots. They're something that exists in the highly dangerous theoretical point between the two."

"They're half and half," said Jo. "Part man, part machine."

"That's the simplest way to put it, yes," the Doctor confirmed. "The deeper truth is rather more disturbing."

"So what about this, uh, planet Mondas..?" asked Rosie, not even sure that she believed in alien invaders from outer space but somehow willing to open her mind in the crisis.

"Mondas is Earth's ill-fated twin planet," the Doctor elucidated her.

"How the hell can Earth have a twin? And how come we can't see it? We can see Mars, and some 'scopes can see as far as Pluto. Some guys say there are even planets beyond that, but if we had a twin, it'd be near us, wouldn't it?"

"It was, once. It wasn't a twin in the biological sense – the two planets weren't, to put it simply, born at the same time; they were millions of years apart – but it was like a mirror-image of the Earth, land-masses all the same shape and size, but in reverse, the land masses of shapes similar to those of Earth's northern continents positioned in Mondas's southern hemisphere, and vice-versa."

"No way. The odds against a coincidence that huge must be... must be solid evidence that there's a God and he makes things the way they are on purpose!"

The Doctor shook his head. "The Earth was probably nothing like Mondas when the Mondasian people discovered it," he theorised. "It's far more likely that the Mondasians used their advanced technology to recast Earth in their own image."

"But they had the blueprint upside-down?" Jo interjected.

Failing to notice the humour, the Doctor continued the story. "In a time long before Earth had even reached its Jurassic period, Mondas had reached the technological equivalent of a very human twentieth century period, with a few basic twists due to their unusual circumstances. Some chap I suppose must've made a breakthrough in the field of space-travel development, and a huge propulsion system was built into the very fabric of the planet. The Mondasians steered their planet off its axis and took it on a journey through space, and it's still out there now, somewhere, traversing the galaxy, making its way home. It'll return in 1986."

Rosie was puzzled. "But if it's not back yet, how are these Cybermen things here?"

The Doctor sighed. "On Mondas's journey, the planet passed other inhabitable worlds around the universe, and now and again it dropped off travellers. If there were inhabitants, the Cybermen consumed the technology and biology into their own."

"Consumed how?"

"Well, that's the nature of the beast. Mondas is still travelling in space, and the rigours of that travel have been causing problems. The atmosphere will have been totally destroyed a long time ago and the whole world plunged into constant winter..."

"Kinda like it is here."

"In a way. Because of it, the average Mondasian lifespan must have shortened drastically, hearts giving out completely because of the cold, blood freezing in the arteries and veins and limbs becoming useless. With their new skills of spare part surgery at hand the Mondasians obviously decided that any biological parts that stopped working or started failing would simply be replaced with mechanical ones. Unfortunately no one told them that such surgery wouldn't in itself provide a solution, that there would be other problems."

"Such as?"

"The fragility of the human mind. Imagine having so many mechanical prostheses in your body that you can't work out where the machine ends and the man begins?"

Jo was getting it. "So they found a mechanical solution to that problem too?"

Rosie was fighting to concentrate on the road with all the new and unusual information that had been suddenly pumped into her brain. "How the hell can you have a solution to a problem like that?" she scoffed. "What, do you amputate your feelings or something?"

"Yes, exactly," said the Doctor. "A microchip on the brain to stop the impulses that cause normal human emotional responses."

Rosie's jaw dropped. "Oh man, that's sick. That's fuckin' sick."

"Do mind your language, my dear," the Doctor said kindly.

"Sorry," said Rosie. "But that's way past any kind of sick I ever heard before. These Mondas dudes got so cold that they started replacing their body parts with robot junk. I get that. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. But they get so much of that garbage in their bodies that it drives them crazy, so they get their emotions surgically removed too? That's gotta beat even the goddamn Russkis. Can I say goddamn?"

The Doctor seemed sad. "I do agree with you, you know. The Cybermen are totally ruthless, their only intention is to gain power and that determination is utterly unhindered by any degree of compassion or mercy. They care for nothing."

Jo chimed in again. "If they don't care about anything, why do they want power?"

"Because it makes sense," said the Doctor. "When you're reduced to the level of a machine and have no animal desires, your understanding of the universe is cut down to simple logic and mathematics. The Cybermen assess other life forms and discover that they are weak and vulnerable, and logically no one wants to be weak and vulnerable. It isn't good for them, and Cyber-conversion removes these weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and therefore logically you're better off as a Cyberman. Every time they meet a new life form they analyse it, and if it's weaker or less intelligent than they are, they process it and it becomes a Cyberman. They actually believe they're doing each innocent being they convert a favour."

"So it's not really power they want," Jo supposed. "It's not even conformity. It's to sort of improve everyone, if you can call it an improvement."

"It depends what you'd consider improved," the Doctor nodded. "As a Cyberman, you will be stronger than any ten men, almost immortal, dependent on no one and practically indestructible. They're incapable of feeling any kind of pain or depression and they never get sick. But you'll never love anyone, never smile, never enjoy a meal, never keep a pet and never care about anything ever again."

Jo looked sad. "That's horrible," she said. "No more laughter. No more affection. No more kindness. I don't think I like the idea of Cybermen, Doctor."

"Neither do I, Jo," said the Doctor solemnly. "But someone does. Otherwise they wouldn't be here."

Rosie glanced at him. "What do you mean?"

"Cybermen don't belong here," the Doctor explained. "Someone's brought them here and I'm beginning to realise that this might all have been arranged for my benefit."

"How d'you mean?" asked Rosie.

"The eyes on the Statue of Liberty have been cut out in a very distinctive shape, and that task was undertaken with great care."

"They're round," said Rosie. "With a little round nick on each one, making it look like Lady Liberty is crying. Like she has tears in her eyes. I figured maybe some artist went in there and did it as a statement, tears for dead America."

"You'll find Cybermen's eyes look very similar," said the Doctor. "Someone cut those shapes out deliberately because they want to get the attention of someone who knows the Cybermen."

Jo frowned. "But you're the only person here who seems to know anything about them."

"Exactly," said the Doctor. "Which means whoever brought them here knows something about me."

**EPISODE THREE**

The Master glanced down at Louis Hayes's body on the operating table. Louis wasn't dead; neither was he alive, not alive as Louis Jefferson Hayes anyway. There was a lot of swollen tissues around the seams where flesh met metal and those seams were smeared with dried and congealed blood. His eyes were dead, staring up at the ceiling in an almost zombie-like way and the Master decided that Louis Hayes was never a handsome man and would need a faceplate soon. He'd get it after full processing. Some of the programming had been completed and while Louis had not really been given much in the way of comprehensive powers he was capable of executing basic tasks and following simple orders. But not from the Master, though. The Cyber Planner had insisted that the Cybermen would be obedient only to itself and the Cyber Controller. Organic life forms were often perfidious and could not be trusted. It was illogical for them to behave this way when they had the marvellous opportunity offered to them by the Cybermen, but then organics were generally illogical creatures. It had been agreed that the Master would be allowed some basic authority over the small group of Cybermen that staffed his base, but he would only have the level of command afforded to a Cyber Leader, nothing higher, and any order he gave could be overridden if the Cyber Planner decided it was not in the interests of the Cyber Race. The Master did not control Louis; the Cybermen did, that being the rule with fresh converts, and therefore all of the Master's orders to Louis would have to be routed through his troops. "He will need to be delivered to Professor Tamashevska for Stage Four testing," he told one of the Cybermen who had doubled as an assistant surgeon. "Konstantin will have to take him."

"Konstantin is occupied," said the Cyberman. The Cyberman had not left the Master's laboratory all day and had not seen Konstantin, but it knew where he was and what he was doing. "He is preparing to close down the laboratory operated by the human resisters."

"I see," the Master nodded. "Well he'll have to make himself available as soon as possible, before these adaptations fail and this subject dies."

"We can deliver it," said the Cyberman.

"You cannot go into the open," snapped the Master. "If the Doctor has arrived then he will be on his way here. I don't want you giving away our position. You're hardly inconspicuous. If Konstantin drives the van he'll appear to the Doctor's eye a perfectly ordinary human being."

The Cyberman considered for a moment and the Master was sure he could hear a ticking sound coming from inside its head. It was communicating with the Cyber Planner. "Konstantin is now available," it buzzed finally. "A Cyberman will take his duties in the control unit." It nodded at another Cyberman, which walked out of the room without responding, simply obeying its order with no need for ceremony.

"The control signal is working?" asked the Master.

"Yes," said the Cyberman. "The Cybermat has been activated and it has exerted control over one human. That human is now assimilating data. It will give us the location and strength of the laboratory used by the humans to study our technology."

"And then we'll have a train full of new recruits," said the Master. "Is Konstantin on his way up?"

"No," said a voice from behind the evil Time Lord. "He's here."

The Master turned to find Konstantin Sayanovich standing in the doorway, his coat and scarf removed. He was an extraordinary sight. His head was as normal a head as any man's, ruggedly handsome and pale-skinned with a dark moustache and beard and watery eyes, but his body was something completely different. From the collar down, Konstantin Feodor Sayanovich was a Cyberman. His body was covered completely in the strong flexible super-polymer the Cybermen used as body armour and a box was mounted on his chest with the staple Cyber-vascular apparatus sunk into it. Wires and tubes snaked around his limbs and he gleamed strangely in the lamplight. The Master observed him with a little self-aggrandising pride. Konstantin had been an experiment, the Master's first proper experiment in Cybernetics, and he was an impressive specimen. The Cybermen, of course, wanted to finish him off, process the head and have done, but the Master had his own plans for the former Russian Lieutenant. "Put your coat back on," the Master ordered, pointing to the partially-processed New York cop on the table. "He has to be delivered to Tamashevska."

Konstantin scowled. "Another missing link filled in. I bet she loves you to pieces just now."

"Just shut up and do what you're told," snapped the Master. "Get him to the bunker and call me as soon as you arrive. I want to speak to the Professor myself."

"All right," grimaced Konstantin. "But I don't know why I'm taking orders from you still. In my current condition I could crush your head to pulp between my hands if I wanted to. I don't know why I don't do it. You're an irritating bastard."

"You do it because you owe it to me," the Master answered smoothly, coolly, as if the answer were an obvious one. "If I hadn't tested the Cybermen's procedures on you, you'd be dead."

"And if you had not tested them on me you would not have achieved your goal of currying favour with the Cyber Planner," Konstantin grinned. "Looks to me as though we're even. You did something for me, I did something for you. So remind me again why I don't punch through your chest so my hand pokes out of your back holding one of those alien hearts of yours, hm?"

The Master looked up, struggling to meet the taller man's gaze, and stared into his eyes. "Because I am the Master," he said. "Do you understand? I am the Master and you will…"

Konstantin jabbed a finger against the Master's chest and ordered by thought the delivery of a mild but substantial electrical shock. The Master's body was flung across the room and slammed into the back wall. "Don't try it," growled the Russian. "I may not have taken all of the programming yet, but the Cybermen have equipped me with the power to resist your primitive forms of mental conditioning. You can use that to impress the American scum but on me you waste your breath. I advise you to conserve that commodity whilst the option remains available to you." He marched to the table and picked up Louis's body as though it were a ragdoll, slinging it over his shoulder with ease. "I'm taking this subject to Tamashevska," he said. "For the Cybermen, not for you. You may be the Master in your own conceited mind, but here in the real world you belong to us."

The Master staggered to his feet. "Us?" he gasped as he recovered himself. "Is that how you see yourself? As one of the Cybermen?"

"In time," Konstantin replied. "I'm having the haircut as soon as it's convenient."

The Master was surprised but hid it well. "You want the process completed? To give up your humanity?"

Konstantin shrugged with his free shoulder. "Humans are weak," he said. "Fragile. They crave power but they have neither the might to get it nor the nerve to use it. They're corruptible and easily manipulated. They live out short, mediocre lives doing short, mediocre things, warring over soil or oil or points of view, killing each other just because they disagree about who owns what. That is humanity. Would you want it?"

"You're already a Cyberman in all but name," the Master observed.

Konstantin smiled. "Thank you," he said. "I do believe that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me." He looked at the blood all over the operating table and floor. "You should clean up all this shit," he told the Master. "Before the Cyber Planner sees it." And he turned and strode out, Louis's arms dangling limply down his back.

The Master stared ruefully at the receding figure of the almost-Cyberman. So Mr Sayanovich was getting ideas above his station, was he? Something would definitely have to be done about that. As soon as the Russian had finished making himself useful, the Tissue Compression Eliminator would be dusted off. It hadn't had a decent target in months.

**V**

**METAL**

"Clare?"

It was the fifth time Trent Garner had called out the name but there had been no reply on either count. She was probably sleeping, then. Most of the time when she wasn't doing shifts at the refectory or helping out with refurbishments or modifications that's what she'd be doing. Or of course she could be doing a shift in the refectory car at the opposite end of the train. Trent wondered if he had the time to look for her, but he glanced back at his work table and all the unusual objects on it and couldn't resist the urge to return to his seat. He was tired and weary and needed rest, but this was so much more important to him. Clare would drop in on him later, he knew. She'd come to bring him another cup of coffee. He'd wait until then to tell her the news.

Clare wasn't asleep. She wasn't in the refectory and she wasn't refurbishing. She gathered herself up from the floor of the lounge car and shook her head as if imagining that somehow that action would clear it. Curiously, after a few seconds everything did become clear. She knew her purpose, her duty, her orders. She heard her name called in the distance and knew the voice, and she started back to the laboratory car.

No one in that laboratory car ever knew or realised how close to the enemy they actually were, and if they had done then they might have done something about the issue a very long time ago. The subway train that everybody called Trent Garner's Crazy Train hadn't moved since the bombardments despite the best efforts of Trent and his people to recondition it and it had remained stock-still on that spot, less than half a kilometre from 103rd Street Station. The station had been sealed off and most of the tunnels in the Central Park area, along with their adjoining stations, had been developed into the corridors and chambers of the secret Russian base. 103rd was the laboratory of Professor Tamashevska, who was trying to save everyone from radiation sickness by converting people into Cybermen. Conversion into Cybermen was not the cure for radiation sickness in itself; the converts were the only beings capable of working on the radiation reducing machines set up around Central Park. Tamashevska had been told by the Cyber Controller that the machines were reducing radiation in the atmosphere with the intent of making America habitable once more, and she had believed it, but it had lied. Cybermen did that a lot. The machines were sucking in all of the radioactive particles that they could, but they were storing them and catalysing them inside secret reactors whose purpose was to charge massive batteries. The converted labourers, mechanics and technicians, after completing the maintenance of each machine, were going out and fetching in more specimens for conversion. Tamashevska's lab only processed a few humans a week, but she had no idea that other labs had been set up and these, fully manned by Cybermen, were much more prolific. It was in one of these converted subway stations that a group of Cybermen connected the super-batteries that were fully charged to the newly developed Advanced Biomechanical Conditioner – the new Cyberman-making-machine – and connected up human subjects captured from outside. The Master had no idea about this extra lab either, although the Cybermen knew about him and his project. He was filling in the surgical missing links. The Cyber Controller had arrived with the Time Lord in his machine a few years ago and it had been agreed that the Controller would run the main project from Central Park and that the Master would work in secret on Long Island. The Central Park Project's purpose was to set in motion the Controller's plan to process the entire population of the former United States and through that process develop an army that could conquer the entire globe. The plan was flawed because the Controller was not himself fully processed and did not entirely understand the nature of the conversion process. Attempts at Cyber-surgery had failed time and again and the Master had by some means or other managed to hook up with a couple of fully developed and experienced Cybermen and offered the Controller the opportunity to capitalise upon their skills. The Master had some agenda of his own that he played close to his chest and asked for no help with, but in order to facilitate it he apparently just had to be in the company of Cybermen. He agreed that with the help of his two Cyber-henchmen he would test conversion surgery on a number of human subjects and send on the most successful jobs as templates for Tamashevska. Tamashevska had spoken to the Master – she had insisted on knowing where the meat for butchering was coming from – and she had not liked him but she had agreed to cooperate because there had been nothing else. Had she known what she had been doing she probably would have killed herself. If the people on the Crazy Train had known what she was doing they probably would have killed her. She dozed in a chair, having finally surrendered at eight minutes past four in the morning to her fatigue, in her little office cubicle just off the laboratory floor at Unit 103. Her sleep was uneasy and often shaken, her dreams often twisted, confusing nightmares of gaunt figures reaching out to steal her soul. Sometimes she mumbled, even talked in her sleep. "Save the world," she would murmur. "Save everyone in the whole world." But when she woke she accepted without a moment's thought that dreams don't really come true. She felt a sloshing sensation in her head and for a moment found herself on an old wooden ship on an uneven sea, rocking in slow motion. It occurred to her that she was being shaken and she opened her eyes. She was in her office, her vision blurred but slowly resolving. The shapeless blob became the team's only British member. "Oh, it's you Robert."

Robert smiled and put a cup of strong coffee into the Professor's hands, steadying her. "Subjects eighty-six and eighty-seven are ready, Professor," he told her quietly. "Eighty-seven came in about half an hour ago. The halftype brought him in. He's in a right state. I don't know how they think he'll stand up to the conversion process."

Tamashevska picked up instantly on the mention of the 'halftype' – the crude, distasteful nickname that people on the project had given to the Master's delivery boy. "Sayanovich is here?"

Robert nodded. "Mr Sonofabitch is waiting on the floor for you."

"Thanks, Robert." The Professor sipped her coffee. "Tell me something, will you?"

"Fleas can jump hundreds of times their own height," Robert replied with a smirk.

Tamashevska gave a humourless cackle. "No, my friend. Not a random fact. I don't think I ever asked you, but why did you stay and let the Board draft you into this project?"

Robert sighed and perched on the edge of Tamashevska's small desk. "Hope," he answered, picking up his own cup of coffee and sipping it. "I was on holiday here with my wife and son when the bombardments started. Nobody was expecting them. We got separated. I'm sure they're still here somewhere, nearby, and I'm praying they're still alive. I stayed in the hope that I might find them and I let myself come into this project because I didn't want to end up like the halftype and his chums, stop even caring about my family."

Tamashevska nodded, offered a weak smile and raised her cup. "Nadezhda," she said.

"Yeah," replied Robert, chinking his cup on hers. "Hope."

"There!" the Doctor barked as his funny little contraption squeaked suddenly, the squeak sustaining and holding as a high-pitched vibrato hum, and he pointed out of the station wagon at the snow-covered expanse ahead.

Rosie was surprised. "The Park?" she said. "The Russkis and your Cybercreatures are holding out in Central Park? But there's nothing here. Nobody ever comes here anymore."

The Doctor glanced at her. "Perfect hiding place then, isn't it?"

Rosie pulled the wagon to a stop and banged hard on the panel behind her as a signal to her team to disembark. She started shutting down the engine, venting the steam and extinguishing the fire to make sure none of the valuable fuel was wasted as the Doctor and Jo got out. By the time Rosie herself had her booted feet in the snow the rest of the party had gathered in front of the wagon, ready to go. The air of the eerily deserted space echoed with the clicks and clacks of pistols being made ready for firing and Rosie added the sound of her own gun to the chorus. She looked out ahead at what had once been Central Park, now nothing but snow as far as the eye could see. She took a deep breath. "Must have some pretty clean air out here," she smiled. "Just breathing it in makes me feel kinda good."

The Doctor was waving his hairdryer thing around and the two spoon-like protrusions from its nose were quivering. "It certainly is clean," he agreed. "The reason why you feel good is because there aren't any radioactive particles getting into your system here."

"I thought they didn't bother us anyway now we're taking your pills," Rosie inferred.

"Well they can't kill you," the Doctor explained. "Or even make you seriously ill, but they're still capable of making you feel lethargic and weak."

"Doctor," Jo interjected, pointing out. "Is that one of the machines?"

The Doctor narrowed his eyes, resisting the strong white glare as he followed the line indicated by her finger. A black box like a shed with a sloping roof protruded from the snow, itself topped with the white stuff. In one of its sides, the tallest and broadest, were set two huge grilles. "Yes, Jo," he said and started marching toward it. Even the cops had to jog to catch up with him and despite the snow he was beside the building in an instant. Its broad side was about ten feet tall and the whole thing was clearly made of metal. The Doctor carefully placed the flat of his hand on the surface. "I thought so," he said. "It's warm."

"About the only goddamn thing that is," grunted Rosie, and she was rewarded with the sniggers of her NYPD cohorts. "Gather round, boys. We found a heater."

"I'd be careful if I were you," the Doctor told her. "It's radioactive."

"Doesn't work on us with the magic drugs, Doc," Rosie smiled. "Remember?"

"That won't stop it exploding if too much contact with it causes critical mass," the Doctor answered flatly. "I somehow don't think a couple of pills will help in the event of another nuclear holocaust."

Rosie frowned. "I'm with ya," she said sheepishly. "Sorry for being such an ass."

The Doctor patted her shoulder. "It's all right." He had started examining the structure. "Definitely Cybertechnology," he nodded. "I'd say a remnant of their Planet Fourteen Dynasty."

Jo shrugged. It looked like a metal shed to her, or one of those electricity substations she'd seen warnings to keep away from in Public Information Films on the telly. But the Doctor was probably right, of course, and she was long past the stage of trusting him implicitly by now. "So these are the Cybermen who travelled?" she asked.

"One of the factions, yes," the Doctor nodded. He moved in closer to her and spoke quietly, not wanting to share what he was about to say with the cops. "I've been on Planet Fourteen when the Cybermen were there, planning to invade the Earth in 1968, and I'm starting to realise what's happened. I think a couple of the Cybermen who effected that failed Invasion must have survived and fallen to Earth, and that will have been the turning point where history as you know it branches off into this parallel."

Jo just about got it. "UNIT stopped the invasion, didn't they? I knew I'd heard the name Cybermen somewhere."

"I did play some small part in stopping it myself," the Doctor told her modestly. "But yes, the Brigadier and Benton were involved I particularly recall. The Cyberman attack ships were destroyed in space but I expect a couple of Cybermen somehow survived it. On my way to the planet of the Gonds I did scan for signs of Cyberman life functions and got nothing, so they should all have been dead."

"Maybe your equipment was malfunctioning," Jo suggested.

"Or maybe someone got there before me," the Doctor frowned, still thinking about the eyes of the statue, his tormentor's special message to him. "I'm beginning to think this operation bears all the hallmarks of one of the Master's grandiose schemes."

Jo gawked. "The Master? In this universe?"

The Doctor nodded. "Possibly," he said. "He may have deliberately collected a couple of Cybermen and then used his TARDIS to cross into this parallel for some reason. He may even have been responsible for my TARDIS arriving here."

"But I wanted to go to New York, Doctor," Jo pontificated. "If the Master's here, even in an alternate version of New York, he couldn't have made me choose where I wanted to go. It would be too much of a coincidence."

The Doctor decided not for the moment to explain the TARDIS's telepathic circuitry or to pitch the supposition that the Master might have exerted his will by way of the telepathic systems of both his and the Doctor's TARDISes to very subtly hypnotise Jo, albeit only for a few seconds. Long enough to randomly choose New York as a destination. And then with his will still exerted over the Doctor's TARDIS the Master could then have persuaded it to switch to this parallel rather than going to the New York of established history. That could all be worried about later. The machine was the most important thing now – the machine and its owners.

Rosie sidled up to him. "I don't see any Russkis," she said flippantly. "Robot people either."

The Doctor looked down at the point where the metal shed vanished into the snow. "They're underground," he told her. "In the subway tunnels."

**VI**

**SIX UNDERGROUND**

Konstantin sat casually on a workbench and lit another cigarette. He looked up at Tamashevska, who was scowling furiously. "Oh, I forget," he grimaced. "There's no smoking in here. Ha." He took the cigarette from his mouth, rolled up his sleeve and stubbed it out deftly on the metallic finish of his Cyber forearm. "What can I say? My body is a temple." Tamashevska was still not impressed, still standing there in silence, simmering. Konstantin shrugged. "Look, I don't know why he wants to talk to you. He just told me he did."

"Maybe I don't want to talk to him," Tamashevska spat. "I'm sick of hearing his patronising platitudes, his over-complicated explanations that are obviously intended specifically to leave the listener no wiser and especially his excuses."

"Nevertheless," Konstantin replied as he reached inside his coat and pulled out the direct-link communicator, "you have a duty to the… the Director of the Board." He knew that Tamashevska did not know that the Director of the Board was in reality the Cyber Controller. She knew very little about the Cybermen in reality. She certainly did not know that they were alien or that they intended to consume the entire human race. She assumed that the Board were all men who had been injured or crippled and had taken the augments in order to keep going so that they could run this philanthropic project with the intention of saving Man from extinction. Not once had it ever occurred to her that they were important people selected by the aliens to be converted so that they could take control of key positions around the planet. Even when she'd met the latest addition to the Board she'd assumed that someone had just found him somewhere, near to death, and given him the surgery in order to get him on his feet again. Konstantin knew that a lot was being kept from her and he had already made up his mind not to interfere with that. He didn't want the plan jeopardised because he considered himself to be a part of it. He was loyal to his brothers. He looked from the communicator to Tamashevska. "Well, are you going to take it?"

Tamashevska snatched it, not wanting it at all, and switched it on. It was black and flat and rectangular, with curved edges, like a thin bar of black soap, and it had a little visual screen about the size of a key fob and a selection of buttons with numbers on them. Some might have confused it with a pocket calculator, but she was used to this so-called 'mobile telephone' by now and fully aware that these, this communicator and others belonging to the Cyber-project staff, were the only phones in America that worked. The number was saved in its memory and she pressed the call button. The Master's face appeared on the little screen, smug and self-satisfied as always. "My dear Professor," he intoned with the utmost charm. "How nice of you to call. You know how very much I look forward to our little discussions."

"Shut up," Tamashevska snapped. "You want a progress report, you're getting one. All the subjects you sent are A-OK, fully converted and good to go. Just these latest two of yours to do. Where do you want them when they are ready?"

"Place them on standby and await my arrival," the Master replied. "I'll be coming to collect them shortly. Oh, and you have intruders, by the way."

Tamashevska squeaked. "What!"

The Master chuckled gleefully. "A small group of New York policemen has found your base, Professor," he told her. "They are trying to gain entry via one hundred and third street station. But don't worry. I've sent someone to deal with them."

The phone cut out. Tamashevska tried to ring back, but all she got was an automated message saying the number she was trying to reach was unavailable in a stupid simulated posh English accent. She thrust the phone back into Konstantin's hands. "Get out," she barked. "Just go back to Long Island and do whatever it is you and that idiot do over there. Go on!" And as Konstantin shrugged his shoulders, reignited his cigarette and strolled away, she ran out of the room, shouting for Major Volkov.

The Cyber Controller was more like Konstantin than a Cyberman proper. His head, like Konstantin's, was human, though a little older than that of the Russian, the hair grey-white and short, the skin of the face lined. The body was a Cyber-body, though, and the oldest one on this world barring the bodies of the two original 'pureblood' Cybermen that the Master had brought with him and the Controller in his TARDIS. This world, the Controller remembered, was not unlike the one he'd left. The differences were subtle if distinct and only really occurred in small areas, the layout of a factory floor arranged a little bit differently, the first name of a politician being Cedric in this world when it was Cyril in the world of the Controller's origin. The only major difference in this case had been the end result of the Cold War, and the Controller knew that was only significantly different because he had changed its direction. When he had been delivered by the Master to Russia he had offered the Cybermen to the Kremlin, and the victory-hungry Russians had taken them eagerly. With the assistance of the two Cybermen they had been given, plus the Controller and the Master, they had built a small Cyber-army, new weapons and the anti-radiation systems. The Controller had explained to Brezhnev that with the machines it would be easier to conquer, because a few nukes could clear up all resistance and then the machines could clear up after the nukes. Brezhnev had been sorely disappointed when the machines had turned out to be slow and prone to malfunction, but that of course had been the Controller's plan all along. He had intended the clear-up machines to be flawed so that radiation-proof workers would be needed to fix them, and that would mean more Cybermen would have to be made. And more Cybermen could make more Cybermen. He promised Brezhnev that with the full backing of the Russian government he could build enough Cybermen to tidy up America so that moving in would be easy by no later than 1974, and Brezhnev had agreed only upon the condition that there would be a Russian military presence there and his own hand-picked team of scientists, to ensure that they were not being double-crossed. The Controller had expected this and made provision for it. He had also expected that the Master was not the altruist to the Cyber cause that he made himself out to be, and had made a plan to deal with him too. That had started with the construction of the new Cyber Planner. The Cyber Planner had been installed in one of the chambers of the underground base and was protected by the Board, whose Boardroom was immediately outside its chamber, and by the original retinue of Cybermen built by the Kremlin (and of course reprogrammed by the Planner to obey it and not the Russians). That same retinue had then captured the Master's TARDIS and held it to ensure his cooperation.

By now the project was in full swing, and one great statement to that progress was the recent completion of the ABC and its many appendages. The conversion chamber was a magnificent vault whose walls were lined with hexagonal cells like an enormous honeycomb, each cell large enough and deep enough to hold a fully-grown man of any build. In the centre of the vault there stood a cylindrical metal pillar that ran from the floor to the ceiling and was mounted with levers, knobs, dials, buttons and flashing lights and displays. The whole place was freezing cold too, colder even than the snow-caked city above, but this was essential to the process. Freshly-converted Cybermen needed to be frozen for a time and allowed to sleep in order to recover from the sudden transition from man to machine. Also, the army was not yet complete, and better to freeze them as they were made and then unleash them on the world all at the same time when the numbers were sufficient than to just trickle them out, few by few. The Controller observed the vault as he entered it, took in the cells, all but fifty of them now full, and nodded to the Cyberman standing at the control column and checking the system. "Are the remaining converts selected?" he asked.

"No," said the Cyberman. It showed neither sign of regret nor fear of reprisal. It simply and plainly told the truth. "There are controlled humans on the train. They will be coming."

"Enough?" asked the Controller, aware of the Crazy Train but unsure of its compliment.

"Forty-two," the Cyberman answered. "But there are intruders. They will be suitable."

The Controller was surprised. "Intruders? Why wasn't I informed?"

"It was not necessary," said the Cyberman. "Action has been taken. The capture of the intruders is imminent. When they have been captured they will be brought here with the humans from the train."

"Very well," the Controller nodded. "Make the final preparations."

"Yes," the Cyberman buzzed and continued with its work.

The Controller returned to the entrance to the vault and opened it again. "Come in, gentlemen," he told the rest of the Board. "Come and see how we've been progressing." He led the other partially-converted men into the large circular room. "Splendid, isn't it?"

The newest member of the Board looked around in awe. He was slightly programmed in order to control his emotions but still capable of some human responses. "It's not what I was expecting, Mr Vaughn," he said, his American accent making the buzz of the Cyber-enhancements sound a little silly.

Tobias Vaughn smiled at him. "Don't worry, Mr Kennedy," he answered. "It's not what anyone was expecting."

Together with Tobias Vaughn, the refugee from another reality, John Kennedy and the handful of other political dignitaries stood silently watching the Cybermen in the vault working at the cells and thus reinforcing their strange parody of bees.

The Doctor's massive torch had come in handy yet again as he, Jo and the police officers had managed to break into 103rd Street Station. Indeed, it had been used to weaken the padlocks on the large metal shutter that had kept everyone out so that a well-placed bullet from Rosie's gun to each completely shattered them. Now it lit the way in the pitch darkness of the disused tunnel, and Jo found herself once again nervously clutching Rosie's hand and remembering the daunting tread through the Statue of Liberty with a chill of fear. It was quiet as well as dark and cold in there and the little narrow walkways only really intended for use by subway maintenance workers were slippery and precarious. Everyone moved slowly and cautiously in single file, picking their way along and staying away from the track ditch. The subways hadn't been operational in a long time, but the Doctor had pointed out that the people hiding the secret base would surely have taken precautions for its protection, probably including electrifying this section of track in case anyone sneaked in. The progress was numbingly slow and the Doctor had kept up front and taken everyone's mind off the tedium and cold by telling them what he knew about the Cybermen and what he had managed to work out about what was going on here as he waved his detector-thing about in one hand and his torch in the other. Eventually, however, the facts had run out and now it was quiet again, quiet and cold and empty, and Jo didn't feel comfortable. She had turned to Rosie for that. The tough girl cop was brave and streetwise, a no-nonsense kind of girl, but she was warm too, kind and sweet, and she seemed to like Jo very much. Jo wondered if they might become friends, if maybe the Doctor might consider taking her back with them to 'the real world' in the TARDIS when this was over, if of course the TARDIS could be made to work again, and if of course they all got out of it alive. "It's colder down here than it is on the surface," Jo told Rosie with a shiver.

"Heat goes up," Rosie said. "I'm pretty sure I heard that someplace. So maybe what little there was went up there and left nothing but the cold down here. C'mere honey." She released Jo's hand and put an arm around her waist instead, snuggling her close.

Jo nuzzled into Rosie's body as they walked. "Thank you."

"It's nothin'," Rosie shrugged modestly. "Josephine?"

Jo wasn't used to people using her full given name, but she found she liked the way Rosie pronounced it, stressing the last syllable. "Hm?"

"D'you like girls?" asked Rosie.

In her witless innocence Jo completely missed the obviously sexual purpose of the question, allowing it to soar high over her head. "Of course," she said. "I have to like them, being one myself."

Rosie chuckled. That kind of dizzy naivety was so attractive. "I kinda meant something else, sugar," she smiled. "I meant… Well, you know how we're snuggling up like this?"

Jo looked quizzically up. "Yes?"

"Would ya maybe think about doing something like that in a big warm bed with a girl?" asked Rosie casually, as if she'd had a lot of experience of that kind of thing. "With maybe a lot less clothes on?"

Jo's eyes widened. She wasn't completely stupid. She'd heard about boys who liked boys and girls who liked girls before, even had a very funny gay friend at college, but she'd never even thought about touching a girl herself. The sudden realisation that Rosie rather obviously fancied her came as something of a shock. "Well," she said. "I… uh…"

She didn't have a chance to finish.

"STOP!" a voice boomed from somewhere down the tunnel a way behind them. Everyone looked back and saw only two tiny lights bobbing toward them about seven feet in the air.

"Who is that?" demanded Rosie. "This is the NYPD and we're armed. Show yourself!"

After a few seconds they crossed the threshold of the Doctor's torchlight. They were men in armour, seven feet tall, gaunt and gleaming and marching steadily toward them. Each man had a set of squared-off bars either side of his head like huge handles and a kind of metal mask for a face with cut-out circles for eyes and a thin slit for a mouth. Jo gasped. "Doctor, are they Cybermen?"

"I'm afraid so, Jo," the Doctor called to her. "Looks like my hunch was right and the world is in the most terrible danger."

One cop wasn't about to be intimidated. He pointed his gun at the advancing monsters and fired four times. He heard the ricochet of each bullet as it glanced off the metal skins of his target and they marched on without flinching. "Resistance is useless," one of them announced, its voice a flat mechanical buzz with no inflection or tone. "You will surrender."

"Fuck you!" the cop fired again, aiming at the lamps on the Cybermen's heads in the hope that they were weaker. They weren't. A Cyberman raised its arm, pointing out to the cop who had fired as if pointing in accusation. A bolt of blue like a brilliant streak of lightning flashed from the Cyberman's finger and touched the cop's head. He screamed and fell into the track gutter. There was a flash and the acrid smell of static electricity and burning flesh. The Doctor had been right. The tracks were electrified.

Jo panicked and pulled herself free of Rosie. "Come on!" she shouted. "Run!"

Another Cyberman lighting flash lanced out. Jo lost her footing. Had it hit her or had she slipped on the frosty walkway? Rosie reached out to grab her. "Josephine!" she screamed.

But it was too late. Jo had fallen down to the tracks below.

_**To be continued…**_


	4. Episode 4

**Doctor Who**

**BACKWINTER**

**By Alex Lee Rankin**

The Doctor had suggested that everyone surrender, and the cops hadn't argued. There wasn't really any point in arguing. It was clear that the Cybermen had superior might and there was no chance of either legging it or fighting it out. Rosie had already pretty much given up, dropping her gun on the cold ground as she surrendered not only to the Cybermen but also to her irrational urge to cry. The Doctor had switched off his torch, knowing that even that powerful gadget wouldn't do much damage to a Cyberman. The Cybermen marched up the path to the small shivering group and one positioned itself at the back of the line, guarding its prisoners. The other marched on to the head of the line, to the Doctor. "Surrender that machine," it demanded.

The Doctor raised his hands, torch in one, detector in the other. "Which one?"

The Cyberman assessed the situation. "Both," it answered, choosing the safe option. The Doctor gave the torch and detector to the monster and it raised one in each hand. Once again its lightning bolts burst forth from its fingertips, but this time they danced around the gadgets and fried them to shapeless molten lumps. The Cyberman dumped the smoking, smouldering, stinking objects unceremoniously into the track gutter. "You will come with us," it told the Doctor. It wasn't giving and order or making a request. It was telling the Doctor what was going to happen.

"To where?" the Doctor asked. "Inside your base, I suppose."

"Yes," said the Cyberman. "You will be taken to the Cyber Controller."

"My my," the Doctor exclaimed with wide eyes. "He goes back a long way. I won't meet him properly until the twenty-sixth century!" Of course the Doctor allowed for the possibility that the Cyber Controller he had met wasn't the only one there had ever been.

The Cyberman ignored the cryptic remark. "You will all surrender your weapons," it told the cops flatly and plainly. "Give them to your guard." The cops handed their guns one by one to the other Cyberman, who bent the barrels in turn into L-shapes in his hands and threw them into the ditch. The first Cyberman watched and once apparently satisfied gave its comrade another order. "Bring the other humans."

"Yes," said the second Cyberman and it touched a control in the box on its chest. The Doctor and the cops heard shuffling in the darkness and after a moment spotted the figures advancing in the bluish light of the Cybermen's helmet lamps. They were human, but they shuffled in lumbering, somnolent steps, their eyes fixed and staring like zombies. One of the cops recognised a couple of them. "Hey," he said quietly to Rosie. "Isn't that Clare Garner?"

The Doctor cut in. "Who?"

"Clare Garner," the cop said. "And her dad, Trent. Trent Garner was an electronics expert back in the day, used to dissect Jap radios and stuff to see how they worked and then sell what he learned to US companies so we could build up our own stuff. What the hell is up with them?"

"I imagine they've been doing a very similar thing with Cyberman technology," said the Doctor with a tone that suggested strong disapproval. "Only it got the better of them. The Cybermen are controlling them."

The cop looked up. "Controlling?"

"The Cybermen can exert a kind of control over human minds," the Doctor explained. "They devised some kind of brainwave manipulator and they use it to turn human beings into slaves. They're almost hypnotised, though the process is far more sophisticated than simple hypnosis."

"Will they do that to us?" asked the cop worriedly.

"No," the Doctor told him.

The cop breathed a sigh of relief. "Cool."

The Doctor broke that relief in an instant. "They'll do far worse to us."

**EPISODE FOUR**

Jo sucked in a sudden breath as she regained consciousness. Her head was pounding. She'd hit it on the edge of the walkway when she'd tried to duck that Cyberman blast and slipped. That's what had knocked her out. Slowly she gathered up the vestiges of her thoughts and made the best job she could of stringing them all together into a story that from which she could establish one or two things. Those Cybermen would have taken the Doctor by now, and Rosie. Rosie. Rosie. Rosie was lesbian, wasn't she? She liked girls. She liked Jo. She wanted to cuddle up in bed with Jo. Jo tried not to think about that too much, although it finally and certainly explained with absolute clarity the brash lady cop's kindness toward her. They'd been talking about girls in… where? In the underground tunnel. She was still in the underground tunnel, in the cold and dark, and now for the first time completely alone. She'd gladly at that moment have accepted the thought of Rosie trying to touch her bum just to have the company of someone strong. But there were other things too. The Doctor had said something and he'd been right as usual. He'd said something about the base being protected… Electrified train lines! Jo started but then let out her breath and calmed down. She hadn't been electrocuted. Of that she was sure. But why hadn't she? One of the cops – Officer Barrett – had fallen onto the lines when the Cyberman had fired on him and he had burnt up. Carefully Jo put her hands flat on the surface beneath her. It was uneven, soft and limp, covered with cloth.

It was the body of Officer Barrett.

Jo gasped and scrambled up to get off him, but then she remembered the electrified lines. The massive shock had probably caused his body to convulse and flung it clear of the track proper, into the side of the track canal where it met the concrete of the walkway above. She would have to be careful and move slowly. If she put her hand out too far and touched the track then it would all quite literally be over in a flash. Shaking more with fear than cold, Jo carefully gathered her knees up under her, staying on top of poor Officer Barrett, and reaching up to grab the concrete edge of the walkway she pulled herself to her feet.

**VII**

**YOU'RE ELECTRIC**

The Master was enjoying a feeling of triumph as he sat in the small office that had once belonged to a supervisor of maintenance and repair staff at _Adventureland_ with his feet on the desk, smoking yet another cigar. The Doctor had arrived and been captured and Konstantin was on his way now to Long Island to collect the Master and take him to Central Park for the confrontation. When he had laid this trap the Master had included in Konstantin's augments a life-form detector with basic analytical functions so that the semi-Cyberman could tell not only when there was a living creature nearby but also what species it was. He had picked up the trace of a Time Lord when he was in Tamashevska's laboratory and silently radioed the alert signal to the Master on a concealed frequency. The trap had been sprung. Surely, just as the Master had intended when he had focused the Cyberman Control Signal – their powerful hypnotising beam – through the telepathic circuits of his TARDIS and directed them to the Doctor's, the brat that stood as the Doctor's current companion had suddenly decided she'd fancied a trip to New York. And of course the Master had also used the beam to restore to the TARDIS its dematerialisation codes and some of its auto-piloting functions so that the Doctor would think he had repaired the old crock and try and take off in it. It would, of course, home on the signal transmitted from the Master's TARDIS and materialise within a stone's throw of it, and that was exactly what it had done. The Doctor's TARDIS was now somewhere in New York and the Doctor himself had read the message left for him by a laser-cutter brandishing Master on the face of the Statue of Liberty. The urge to investigate would be too much for the nosey, meddling do-gooder and he'd have worked out a way to crack the Cybermen's base sooner or later. The Master had made an agreement that he would supply Tobias Vaughn with all of the compatible subjects he would need for his initial conversion programme on the condition that he alone could have custody of the Doctor upon his capture. Now he was ready and as soon as Konstantin arrived he would be off to have one last chat with the Doctor. He would discover the location of his old enemy's TARDIS, destroy it in front of him and after revelling in his anguish insist that Vaughn convert the Doctor into a Cyberman and watch him become one of the things he most hated. Yes, that would be fitting. The Master's own two Cybermen, called by the controlled girl from the secret laboratory train to collect its entire compliment, had been the ones to pick up the Doctor, and they had taken him to Vaughn's base. That was the only part that hadn't worked out the way he had intended: the Cybermen had been supposed to take the Doctor immediately back to him. But of course Konstantin had changed their orders and they cooperated more with Konstantin because in the global sense he was one of their own. Konstantin Sayanovich was becoming a liability and would have to be disposed of at the earliest opportunity.

Konstantin was enjoying a moment of triumph as he drove back to Long Island in the powerful hybrid steamroller-monster-truck he had built with a mixture of local junk and Cybertechnology, grinning and smoking another cigarette. The other Time Lord, the one the Master had been out to get, had arrived and Konstantin's beloved brothers had taken him and now he was on his way to collect the Master and hand him over for conversion along with the Doctor. The minds of two Time Lords and their two ships would make fine additions to the biological and technological attributes of the Cyber Race, and with them the Cybermen would become the new Lords of Time. When he had allowed the Master to believe he was totally in control and the brains of the organisation, the conceited Time Lord had been all too eager to bargain with the Cyber Controller for a chance to score the final point against his arch rival. The pettiness was foolish, two people of the same race, both hundreds of years old, qualified in science and technologically advanced, bickering like a couple of schoolchildren. But Konstantin had let the Master have his dream, pretended that he would get the Doctor to do with what he wished as soon as the capture was effected, knowing that all it would mean was that there would be two Time Lords rolled into the melting pot and not just one. He had gone to see the Cyber Controller and explained his plan, and the Cyber Controller had been impressed. When he had asked what Konstantin desired to get out of it, Konstantin had simply and truthfully answered that he would like his conversion to be completed and to become a Cyberman through and through. The Controller had been very obliging. He had promised Konstantin that he would be one of the finest Cyber Leaders ever developed and have at his command a mighty galactic fleet of his kin and their best and deadliest space ships. Konstantin was looking forward to that. But first the Master would be dealt with.

The vault was a truly dreadful sight, a round room something like two hundred and fifty metres in diameter and maybe fifty feet deep, its walls covered completely with hexagonal cells. In some of the cells lay Cybermen in foetal positions, frozen and immersed in translucent blue fluid pinned back behind an equally translucent rubbery membrane like a scab over a deep blue cut. Other cells lay open and inside them were human bodies. The humans were alive, if they could be called that in any real sense, naked and shaven, with mechanical prostheses bolted to their skulls through large round surgical wounds in their scalps. Mechanical arms whipped in and out around each body, dancing around them, cutting them open, cleaning out bodily fluids and useless organs and stuffing in mechanical replacement parts. A lung here, a kidney there, the heart, the intestines, blood, acid and septum and then valves and pipes, a mechanised chest-box and hydraulic fluid. One man had just had his eyes ripped out and replaced with orbs made from crystals with some kind of circuitry connected. Another man was getting the skin peeled off his face while a woman who'd already been through that stage had the metal mask of a Cyberman welded on in its place. Saws and drills and grabs worked rapidly and in unison and the Doctor was appalled to watch it. He was sitting in a chair, one of two special ones brought in by the Cybermen and bolted to the floor. The chairs had deep seats and locking braces to hold the seated person captive, and Rosie sat in the other. The Cybermen had been informed that the Doctor had a companion with him and they had taken it to be Rosie in the absence of Jo. The Doctor was trying not to think about Jo. He had not heard the terrifying crackle of the electrified rails when she had fallen, but that sadly did not mean she was definitely alive. But the only way to keep from thinking about her was to watch the horrific process that occurred before his eyes, and of course he didn't want to do that either. The Cybermen had taken everyone but him and Rosie to the far side of the room and formed them into a queue, shepherding them one by one into the Cyberconversion machine through its access port door. The door would slide up, take someone and slide down and the others would have to wait their turn to become a Cyberman. Some of them were Rosie's cops but the rest were the people that the other cop had said were Trent Garner's group. They had originally been controlled, but that control was relaxed now that they were in this room and totally beyond hope of escape. About twentieth in the queue was a woman in her late forties, holding the hand of her teenage son and trying to convince him that everything would be all right as the boy looked on in awe. Would the Cybermen convert the boy too? Probably. He seemed physically fit enough. Upon reaching the entry port each subject for conversion would have to undress and be naked for the machine. Some had accepted their fate and stripped off despite being a good way down the line. The Doctor didn't think that they should admit defeat so soon. Some of them probably thought by now though that anything was better than the life they had in the nuclear wasteland above their heads. A Cyberman stood directly in front of the chairs at a centre column operating controls. The Doctor glanced at Rosie, who had been silent since Jo's fall in the tunnels. She stared out at the conversion system and seemed unperturbed by it, but of course she was just numb. She had grown attached to Jo and never had the chance to find out whether or not the love was requited. "Don't worry, my dear," he said quietly, calmly. "Time heals."

Rosie shook her head. "I don't want it healed. I don't want anything anymore."

The Cyberman turned to face the two of them. It addressed the Doctor. "You are the Doctor," it buzzed. "The Cyber Controller has ordered that you be detained. He will join us." Then it looked at Rosie. "You are human. You will become like us."

"Sure," said Rosie bitterly. "I'll become what I hate. I'll just walk into that fucking machine of yours and let myself be twisted into whatever the hell you are."

The Cyberman was silent for a moment but for a slight whirr in its chest unit. It seemed to be analysing what she had said. "Yes," it said finally. "You will." It obviously couldn't get its handlebarred head around the concept of sarcasm.

Rosie gritted her teeth. "No way," she growled. "You'll have to kill me first."

"Your self-contradiction is illogical," the Cyberman told her. "To die is also illogical. You will survive. You will become like us and we will survive. To die is unnecessary."

"You don't get it, do you?" Rosie spat at the thing. "I don't want to be what you are. I don't care about you."

"Care?" the Cyberman fell silent again, analysing the word. "That word has been recorded in the category of emotional responses. We have no such responses, therefore your lack of care for us is an irrelevant factor."

Rosie clenched her fists, desperate to hit out at something but unable to with the straps holding her wrists locked down tight. "You're machines," she said flatly. "That's all you are."

"We are examples of the final stage of human evolution," said the Cyberman. Its mechanical voice betrayed no hint of pride in the declaration; it merely stated a fact. "Our lives are without pain, without fear, without misery. We do not succumb to illness or fatigue. We never hunger, never thirst, never experience sexual urges. We never want for things that we cannot have. You hunger, and in the absence of food you experience discomfort. You feel desire for those your circumstances forbid you to touch, and in those circumstances you feel anguish. These things mean nothing to us other than in the purely academic sense. Emotions are merely to be studied in order to reinforce our argument that we are more advanced and all organic life forms would benefit from conversion."

The Doctor smiled at the Cyberman, purely because he enjoyed the feeling. He knew that the emotionless creature wouldn't even notice it. "If you're as mighty as you believe you are, you don't need an argument. You should just be able to take everyone by force."

The Cyberman returned to the processing tank controls but continued the debate. "Humans resist. They are illogical and irrational. They do not understand the benefits of our advancements."

Rosie was becoming hysterical. "Benefits of your advancements?" she shrieked, the tears streaming down her face. "Listen to yourself! You use words like advanced and superior and call yourselves the final stage of human evolution, and what are you, Tin Man? You don't even have a heart!"

"It is unnecessary," the Cyberman explained without looking up from its work. "My life support unit carries out my bodily functions."

"That isn't what I meant," Rosie hissed. "You're machines, not people. You used to be people but now you're just processed meat in a fucking can!"

The Cyberman turned and crossed to her seat. It seemed to regard her with curiosity, which of course it couldn't have been doing. "We are human," it said. "We have always been human."

"Human?" Rosie screeched. "What the hell gives you the right to call yourself human? You can't even love!"

"Neither can we grieve," said the Cyberman.

Rosie finally let herself cry in earnest. The Cyberman was right. He was right and it hurt.

The Doctor glanced pitifully at the shaken girl. "It's no use arguing with them, Roseanne," he sighed, trying to keep her calm. "They don't listen and can't be brought around to any emotional way of thinking."

"They killed Josephine," Rosie sobbed. "I loved her."

"You feel pain," said the Cyberman. "You feel anger. You feel regret."

Rosie stared up at its blank visage. "Yeah," she whispered coldly. "You got that right."

The Cyberman returned to its work. "Become one of us," it said. "We do not feel pain, anger or regret. We are never sorry, confused or lonely. Those words have no meaning to us. The ability to understand them has been removed from our minds. All pain is gone."

"Is it good?" Rosie sniffed.

"Yes," said the Cyberman. "There is no need to be unhappy. We are never unhappy."

"Okay," Rosie said, hearing the sense in the argument. "Let me out of this chair and put me into your machine. Let me be a Cyberman and make me forget my pain. Make me forget that I lost America, that I lost Josephine, that I lost all faith in myself." She sniffed back her tears and took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. "Show me how this magic of yours works."

"There is no magic," said the Cyberman. "Only logic."

The Doctor was aghast. He stared at Rosie in astonishment. "Roseanne, what are you saying? Someone you love dies and that's reason to give up your humanity?"

"Everyone I love is dead, Doctor," Rosie said quietly. "Not just Jo. My mom and dad died in the bombardments, my little sisters of radiation sickness, starvation and hypothermia one at a time not long after. My humanity's what's making me think about it."

"But what the Cybermen are…" the Doctor protested.

"Is free," Rosie finished his sentence with the wrong words. "Free from pain, free from grief, free from love, pride, hate and fear. What the Cybermen are is immune to all pain. Gimme some of that. I want it so bad right now."

"Is anything about being human so terrible that it justifies becoming a Cyberman?"

"No more debate, Doctor. Okay, you hate the Cybermen and will destroy every one you meet if you can. Maybe that'll include me and maybe it won't. If it doesn't then I won't care and if it does then I'll be with Josephine. It's a win-win situation."

"I can't persuade you to change your mind?"

"No. I'm sorry."

"And what Jo would think?"

"Doesn't matter now that she's dead. People's opinions only matter when you can hear them." Rosie cast her eyes to the ceiling. "Dear God," she said. "Sorry I can't put my hands together but I'm strapped down. I know you never approved of me being a lesbian, but I can't help who I love and I hope I don't go to Hell for it. Maybe I can get a chance to be purged of my sins when I make it to the other side, huh? I'm also sorry I've decided to become a Cyberman, but Lord, I just can't take the pain anymore. Please find it in your heart, or whatever it is deities have, to forgive me. Amen."

The Cyberman marched back to her as if on cue. "The conversion apparatus is ready."

"Thanks," Rosie said. "So can I get up?"

The Cyberman unfastened the clamps on her wrists and ankles and then, in a way that almost seemed a grotesque parody of chivalry, helped her to stand up. "Enter the machine," it instructed.

"Shouldn't I get these off first?" she glanced down.

"Remove them," the Cyberman agreed.

Rosie stripped. Naked, she stepped toward the hatch that led into the conversion tank. For a moment she hesitated and glanced back at the Doctor. "I won't hold it against you if you kill me when I'm one of them," she said quietly. "Thank you so much."

"Thank you?" the Doctor could barely believe his ears. "For what?"

"For giving me Josephine," said Rosie. "For the short time I knew her." And she stepped into the machine. The hatch slid closed and she was gone forever.

The Doctor stared at the blank metal door. "And what good did I do you by that, Roseanne? All I did was break your heart."

**VIII**

**INTO THE HEART**

"How touching," said the Master as he marched in escorted by two Cybermen. He strode confidently past the one operating the controls and settled casually in the chair recently vacated by Rosie. "Tell me, Doctor, how are you enjoying your stay in New York?"

The Doctor's sad expression had gone in Rosie's wake and now a look of anger and bitterness had replaced it. "I might've guessed this would be your work," he spat.

The Master shrugged and smiled. "Ah, but you didn't, did you? As always, Doctor, I'm one step ahead of you in our little game. It's just like our old days at the Academy." He looked around at the grotesque processing centre with the hanging figures of humans open and being slowly filleted. He seemed to relish the sight. "I must say all this took quite some setting up, but do you know it's all been worth it, just to once again have the pleasure of your company."

The Doctor was disgusted. He knew the Master was capable of anything, but this was one of the biggest scale operations he'd ever pulled off. "All this was for my benefit," he growled as he realised the terrible truth. "You built all this, slaughtered all these people, caused all this suffering, and all as part of a trap to fuel your petty obsession with intimidating me!"

"Not fuel it," the Master said coolly with a slight shake of his head. "But finally bring it to an end. I'm getting bored of you, Doctor. There was a time when I would have chased you to the ends of the universe just for the sake of making all your lives as miserable as possible, and at that time your rising blood pressure was an entertaining spectacle, but now you've become annoying, an old joke I've heard too many times. The time has come to retire you." He rose from the chair again and turned to his Cybermen. "Release him," he ordered.

The two Cybermen moved to obey his orders but were interrupted by a rattling cry of, "Stop!"

The Master turned to see John Kennedy, dead-eyed and shorn with mechanical prostheses grafted to his head, lumbering jerkily across the room. He rounded on the former American President. "How dare you interfere!" he snapped. "The Cyber Controller agreed that I was to have the Doctor!"

"That agreement is invalid in the advent of new data. The Doctor is also a Time Lord. You and he are to be converted. You will give the Cybermen the power to travel in time and space. Your knowledge will belong to us." Kennedy looked at the Master's retinue. "Strap him down. If he resists, neutralise him."

The Master produced his TCE and tensed for the attack. A Cyberman reached out to grab him and he fired. Before the Doctor's eyes the Cyberman shrank to the size of an old penny and was crushed accidentally under the foot of its brother. The second Cyberman moved in for the kill and the Master made to fire again, but the electrical discharge from the fingers of the Cyberman who had been operating the controls temporarily phased his neurons and he passed out.

There was a light.

Jo sucked in a breath and started to weep with relief as she saw the faint glow ahead. A light at the end of the tunnel at last! She staggered awkwardly toward it, wondering if she were dreaming or perhaps if this might be a mirage that would disappear as soon as she got near enough to touch it. Hoping neither to be the case, she put her hands on the wall to steady herself and, still shaking, made for the source of the light. It took maybe ten minutes to reach it but she got there and found the train. It was spray-painted all over with spectacular graffiti and the doors were open. Jo staggered inside. There were levers and mechanical pumps and things awkwardly built into the train's original fittings, probably adaptations of the same kind that the police used on their vehicles to make them work after the EMP. There was another door, the one leading from the driver's cabin into the train proper, and she slipped through into the corridor. The corridor had been adapted too, in this case for comfort, with sofas replacing the old seats, and there was a small bar set up at the other end of the carriage that looked like it might once have been an old kitchen counter with a coffee pot on it. Jo could see steam rising from the coffee. It was still hot. No one was around and she needed all the comfort she could get. She sat down on the sofa nearest the bar, cried until she had it out of her system, dried her eyes and poured some coffee into a mug. She drank the whole pot and felt a little livelier after that, though she knew that was because of the caffeine rather than any sense of real hope or resolve. She stood up and went behind the counter to root around for some nourishment. She found some bread, cold meat, cheese and mayonnaise, made four sandwiches and ravenously devoured them all to the last crumb. Then she remembered that she had to find the Doctor and Rosie. They would be somewhere back in the direction she had come and that meant going back that way. She wasn't going to venture alone into the dark and cold again. The levers in the driver's cab popped into her head. Maybe she could drive the train deeper into the tunnel and find a station. The station, if near the Cybermen's base, might have power for lighting at least, and if not she at least had the comfort of the train. It didn't occur to her that this had been the train from which the Cybermen had brought those zombie-people when they had attacked her party and so she didn't spare a thought for the fact that the train was conspicuously empty and yet clearly recently vacated if the coffee were anything to go by. The _Marie Celeste _of the New York Subway. Jo cleared her head and popped back into the driving area. There were matches and firelighters and a scuttle full of coal, and poking around she found a hatch. She got very dirty and exhausted loading it, but was wise enough to look around and find the water tank to check that it was full before lighting the furnace. The tank full and the furnace lit, Jo braced herself and waited for the pressure to rise. There was a gauge on the tank and she waited until it showed red. Then she grabbed the biggest lever and pulled it down hard, almost squeaking with self-pride as she felt the floor shake and the train start to move beneath her feet. She hoped she had it going the right way because she had no idea how to steer it, but for now the fact that it was moving at all was a huge comfort. So comforting in fact was it that she completely failed to notice the Cybermat slithering into the cabin behind her.

It was all becoming clear. The Master had been planning this for a very long time and put in a lot of effort. He had wanted to have plenty of contingencies. The Cybermen and the entry into a parallel universe were vital, because if the Master could not kill the Doctor then either he could see him converted into a Cyberman or destroy his TARDIS and trap him in the parallel forever. Either way the victory would be a final and delicious one. But one of the Master's contingencies had blown up in his face and now it seemed he was to join the Doctor in becoming a Cyberman. How typical of the Master to come up with a scheme so ridiculously grandiose that it couldn't be worked without swallowing him completely. He was, for all his claims of superiority over the Doctor, an idiot. That knowledge comforted the Doctor greatly, along with the bittersweet irony that the Doctor would not be going into the processing machine without his old enemy, that the Master would not be able to relish the Doctor's defeat because he would have to share it.

But he'd gone to an awful lot of trouble. Weaving Rosie's stories together with what he'd managed to figure out for himself the Doctor was finally starting to see it all with deeper clarity, and he delighted in revealing his obviously correct conclusions to the Master, now strapped down and slowly recovering from the Cybermen's neutraliser. "You've been here for years, haven't you?" the Doctor said confidently. "You picked up a couple of Cybermen left over from the 1968 invasion in our universe and brought them here, but further back in time. You used the Cybermen to turn the tide of the Cold War and also prevented the assassination of Kennedy in 1963. You knew about Kennedy's unsavoury habits and knew it would be easy to manipulate him and use him to control America. That way you could weaken America's defensive position, making it easy for a low-level attack that would look like a much bigger one because the people of the United States would think all their defences were working at full tilt. The nuclear strikes were only superficial, but you used technology from your TARDIS to accelerate their effects and create this winter, but the EMP wasn't nearly as severe as anyone thought, which is why most of the technology actually still works."

The Master sneered at him. "Those stupid tin soldiers still struggled to cope with the levels of radiation," he grunted. "I had to show them how to build machines that would reduce it."

"Time Lord technology, of course," the Doctor inferred.

"Naturally," the Master answered sardonically.

The Doctor was furious. "And you're irresponsible enough to go around giving it to the Cybermen."

The Master rounded on him. "This universe is a parallel, Doctor," he snapped. "It has no bearing on ours whatsoever."

"And how long do you imagine that will be true once they've converted us?" the Doctor challenged him.

The Master looked up at the Cyberman operating the controls and lowered his voice. "Perhaps we can both escape," he said very carefully.

The Doctor gave a smile of satisfaction. "Possibly," he said in a noncommittal tone. "But first you can fill in some of the missing links. I'm guessing you used the telepathic circuits in your TARDIS to make mine capable of coming here and also trick Jo into wanting to make the trip?"

"Even a complete idiot could work that out," the Master huffed.

"And how did you come to be in this predicament?"

"I was stupid enough to decide that it would be handy to have a partially Cyber-converted servant and the man I chose for the job was impressed with the change in him and decided that his loyalties lay with the Cybermen. He..."

The Doctor started laughing. The circumstances made it somewhat inappropriate but he just couldn't help it. "He led you into a trap!" he chuckled. "Your sidekick decided he preferred the Cybermen, brought you here under the false premise of giving you an opportunity to gloat before despatching me and then handed you over to them!"

The Master was becoming angry. "Do you want to escape from here or not, Doctor?" he hissed.

"All right," the Doctor said, calming down. "Do you have a plan?"

"I doubt it," said another voice, chillingly familiar to the Doctor if slightly different thanks to Cyber-enhancements. "But I have." The Cyber Controller stepped out from behind the control column. His body, like that of the Master's right-hand man Konstantin, was the body of a Cyberman, but the head was the head of a man, a man with short grey hair and one permanently half-closed eye.

"Vaughn," the Doctor breathed. "Tobias Vaughn."

"Cyber Controller now, Doctor," Vaughn told him. "Things have changed since our last encounter, not least for you it would seem." He paused for a moment to let the Doctor take it in. "Oh, I know about Time Lords and how they change. Both the Master and the Cyber Planner have been more than forthcoming..." He looked accusingly at the Master. "Though the latter somewhat more than the former."

The Master saw an opportunity to ingratiate himself once again with the Controller. "My deceptions were necessary, Controller," he said persuasively. "You must be able to see that. I needed an aura of mystery to surround this entire operation so that the Doctor would suspect nothing."

"Ah yes," agreed the Controller. "But do you deny your intention to leave us all here, trapped in this parallel, once you had achieved your goal of killing the Doctor?"

The Doctor chimed in before the Master could answer. "I saw you killed," he said.

The Controller shrugged. "Not killed," he said. "Although rather badly damaged. My body is the body of a Cyberman, Doctor. We're not as vulnerable as you organics."

"We organics?" the Doctor scoffed. "You're still a human being as long as your head is flesh and bone."

"I am a Cyberman, Doctor: advanced, strong, superior. I don't even need to eat, sleep or breathe anymore."

"But don't you ever think about how nice it would be to eat a steak dinner, have dreams or get married?"

"Not anymore. I have ambitions more befitting my standing."

The Doctor sighed. "Then you really are a Cyberman."

The Master smirked. "Don't be too surprised, Doctor. Konstantin is just the same."

Before the Doctor could ask who Konstantin was, the Controller spoke again. "Not anymore," he said with a smile that was most unbefitting the change in him. "Mr Sayanovich's processing has been completed." He looked around the room and pointed at one of the cells high up with a frozen Cyberman sealed inside. "That's him, next to the policewoman who came in with you, Doctor. Tell me, was she your companion?"

The Doctor didn't answer. The reference to a companion had once again started him wondering about Jo. Instead he decided to let the Master carry on with his futile attempt to curry favour with Vaughn. It was evident that the Master was attempting to buy time, but time for what?

Major Volkov took another hit of neat vodka from his hip flask and remained in his seat behind the desk in his office. "You're sure the last have been taken?" he demanded, clearly intent on being absolutely certain before making any moves. He'd been waiting for this moment a long time, but he wasn't about to mess things up by jumping the gun when he was so close.

"Everyone except the last two members of the Daylight Gang," nodded Tamashevska. "They're missing, but their last known location is nearby. The location of the train."

Volkov laughed. "The Crazy Train has never done us any harm before. It's not going to now. Even a genius couldn't get that lump of rusted shit to move." He got out of his chair and drew his revolver with a sneering grin. "Come on then. I think it's time we put the Director of the Board and his chums on ice." He eased his way out of the narrow gap between desk and wall and barged out of the door, Tamashevska in his wake.

Jo heard the sound. The scrape of metal on metal. When she'd heard it first she'd ignored it, assumed it to be part of the engine's noise pattern, but it wasn't and the second time she heard it she was sure of that. It was coming from behind her. She turned and screamed as she saw the writhing silvery object, a metal snake, rearing up like a cape cobra. She stepped back in horror and felt the go-lever touch her spine. There was nowhere to go. She was trapped. Time seemed to slow as the creature sprang up and jack-knifed magnificently into the air, flipping at the apex of its range and diving for her throat. Jo froze, closed her eyes, heard a loud blast and then a clattering crash, smelled smoke, realised that the snake had had plenty of time by now to harm her and hadn't done, opened her eyes and stared in amazement.

"Whooo!" howled the blond-haired man, grinning and holding the futuristic-looking gun up with pride. "This baby really kicks the shit!"

Jo realised her mouth was hanging open, said, "Uh-huh," and closed it.

The blond man looked her up and down and smiled wolfishly. He looked dirty and had stubble, but all in all he was ruggedly handsome. His hands were like shovels and he wore a thick donkey jacket, jeans and what looked like army boots. "So what's a nice girl like you doing in a situation like this?"

"I've lost my friends," Jo stammered. "I think they... uh..."

"Metalheads got 'em," nodded the man. "Right? Motherfuckers came in here after that piece of crap took a bite out of everyone." He pointed at the metal snake on the floor, now a charred, twisted pile of molten scrap metal. "Trent managed to take one of the big metal guys down and we got its gun. I just figured out how it works."

"I can see," Jo nodded. "I'm Jo."

The man chuckled. "Yeah? Me too. Joey anyway. Joey Day. Dude coming up behind me is Julio Ferreira." At that moment an Hispanic man with a headband and a moustache appeared in the doorway behind the blond man.

Jo smiled weakly. "Nice to meet you."

Julio looked at Joey. "The train's moving," he observed.

"Oh yeah!" Joey exclaimed. "Shit. We gotta try and get her under control." He barged past Jo, shoving her out of the way. "Don't mind me, sweetcheeks. You do this?"

Jo nodded sheepishly. "Sorry."

"No need to be sorry, English," Joey grinned, passing his gun to Julio. "You did us a favour. We need her on the move. Just gotta do a little creative steering. Trent briefed us all just in case he got the engines to work so he could have plenty of drivers." He found the steering levers and the second they fell under his hands the sickening rattle and shake of the moving train calmed. "Should be a station here someplace."

"Anything you want me to do, Joey?" asked Julio.

"You got the gun, bro," answered Joey. "Go take a look for any Metalheads. Kill any you find."

"They're called Cybermen," said Jo.

Joey glanced at her. "Is that so? And who're you honey? CIA?" He looked more closely at her and saw her cheeks reddening. "Okay," he sighed. "Cybermen it is. Julio, go see if you can bring me back any Cybermen heads."

Julio laughed. "Sure thing, amigo." And he marched out.

Jo glanced at Joey. "How did you escape the Cybermen?"

"Hid in the john," Joey replied simply, not looking away from the controls. "Metal dudes don't seem to need it."

"I've told you," the Master said. "I can give you much more as myself than I could as a Cyberman. My TARDIS, for example. The controls are programmed to respond only to me, registering my specific brain patterns. Now, my brain patterns will be different after conversion, won't they? My TARDIS wouldn't register them as familiar. It couldn't be persuaded to divulge its secrets to a Cyberman, even a Cyberman that used to be me."

The Cyber Controller considered the argument. "I'm sure a solution can be found," he said. "I should think that once you've been converted and the History Computer has recorded your brain patterns then they can be simulated and relayed to your TARDIS. It shouldn't be too hard to fool it. As you've already proven, you can be very persuasive."

The Master was almost spitting fire, but the Doctor nudged him with the tip of his boot. "It's no use trying to argue with him. He's one of them, and there's no reasoning with them. They see everything as a problem in pure logic, solved either with difficulty or ease by mathematics."

"Spare me the philosophy lesson, Doctor," the Master grunted, lowering his voice. "I still have every intention of getting out of this."

"Oh really?" the Doctor replied with audible doubt in his tone. "How?"

"Another one of my contingencies," the Master replied. "It should come into play at any moment."

As if on cue, the door to the processing unit opened and Major Volkov marched in followed by a squad of troops, Professor Tamashevska and her assistant, Robert. The Cyber Controller turned to face them. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

Tamashevska came to the head of the party. "We are bringing these disgusting projects of yours to an end," she snapped. "By order of the Kremlin, you are being placed under arrest." She gestured to the Doctor and the Master. "Release these two." A couple of soldiers started undoing the clamps on the chairs.

The Doctor looked at the Master. "I take it that woman works here and you've employed her as a double-agent."

"Precisely, Doctor," the Master smiled wolfishly, standing up. "But I also know what is going to happen to her."

Tamashevska heard what the Master had said and turned to him. "What are you talking about?"

A Cyberman flexed its fingers and cut the Russian scientist down. "That," said the Master. And then he ran for the door.

"Stop him!" shouted the Cyber Controller. A Cyberman marched out of the door after the Master. Around him the fight erupted, Russian soldiers with rifles easily beaten down by the Cybermen with their neural-scramble. Jo was at the front of the Doctor's mind; dead or alive, he had to find her. But he also needed to do something for the few people left who hadn't been processed. The Cybermen were distracted by the battle, and the Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver and quickly examined the controls of the processing machine. They were, as he'd expected, linked directly to the main power system. A squeeze of the screwdriver and the controls could be phased and the feedback would burn out the giant batteries. That would put the processing plant totally out of action and then he could make plans to do something more long term about the Cybermen in the time he had afforded everyone. He slipped behind the control column and bumped into a man in a white labcoat. "Oh, I'm sorry old chap," he smiled. "I'd suggest you get out of here."

"I'm not going until I find my wife and son," the man snapped.

"There was a woman with a teenage boy in the queue for conversion about twenty minutes ago," the Doctor told him sadly. "I wouldn't hold out much hope."

But even as he said it, the scientist was looking past him and his face was glowing. "Sandra!" he shouted. "Sandra! Johnny!" and he made to run to them.

The Doctor seized his chance – and the scientist's collar. "If I arrange a distraction, can you evacuate everyone who's able to move?"

The man nodded. "I think so."

"Get on with it, then," said the Doctor and turned back to the machine. As he had suspected, nearly all of the secret base's functions could be controlled from here via the override system. Stupid of the Cybermen to put all their eggs in one basket. The sonic screwdriver came into play once more and there was a sudden rainstorm as the fire alarm system rang out and activated all the sprinklers. The rain shorted the Cybermen's electrical bursts and stopped them reaching their targets and the soldiers rushed them. "Don't waste your time!" shouted the Doctor. "You can't defeat them! Get out of here."

Vaughn spotted the Doctor and he and Kennedy marched toward him, but the Doctor dodged around the pillar and slipped down behind the chair he had been strapped into earlier. Keeping cover for a second, he edged around and looked for a way to get to the door. He knew the Controller and the President were on his heels and he needed a quick solution. He saw Major Volkov lying on the floor, neutralised by a Cyberman and soaked by the sprinklers' rain. Volkov was still holding his revolver. The Doctor rushed out, grabbed the gun and whirled round just in time to see John Kennedy looming over him. "Sorry old chap," he said. "Better late than never." He fired. The shot wasn't fatal – it wasn't intended to be – but Kennedy's shin went from under him as the bullet passed through it and he fell back, crashing into Vaughn and knocking him off his feet too. It seemed that only Volkov and Tamashevska were on the floor still; the Cybermen had picked up what others they could clobber and carried them to the processing machine. Tamashevska was stirring. Perhaps the water had shaken her awake. The Doctor pulled her onto her feet quickly and dragged her to the door. He felt sad that he could do nothing for Major Volkov. The Cybermen marched toward the door in pursuit, but floundered a little as the room started to shake and rumble.

Out in the corridor, a dazed Tamashevska felt the walls and floor shaking around her. "Do I have a really bad migraine or are we having an earthquake?" she slurred.

"Neither," said the Doctor. "It can't be you because I can feel it and it's not strong enough to be seismic."

"So what is it?" asked the stricken Professor.

"An underground train crashing into the complex," the Doctor said. He could see a cloud of dust in the distance. "And not far away either. Come on." He dragged Tamashevska in the direction of the cloud, smiling as he heard the footsteps of the other humans from the processing centre – too light to be Cybermen – filling the corridor behind him. "Everybody follow me!" he shouted to them. "As quickly as possible!"

In the processing room, the Cyber Controller activated the weapon in his chest unit and killed Kennedy, who was no longer useful. He should, he realised, have had Kennedy's body processed as his own had been rather than just adding a few basic modifications. He had been sloppy. He called to one of his Cybermen as he came upon Volkov. "Get this one," he ordered. "We can still process him." A Cyberman approached. "Wait," said the Controller. "He may be dead." And he stooped to take Volkov's pulse.

"Not me, my friend," said Volkov, who had been playing dead the whole time, producing the spare revolver he always carried in case of emergencies. "You." And he put a bullet through Tobias Vaughn's flesh and blood head, killing him instantly.

The Crazy Train got everyone safely to Manhattan, escaping Central Park just in time for the massive explosion to make the Park sink into the ground, leaving nothing but a black crater. The new army of Cybermen was destroyed, though artefacts of Cybertechnology remained and with advice from the Doctor the Russians arranged an alien artefact disposal project, building a rocket to take all the parts back into space. That of course would take a long time, but Olya Tamashevska gave the rest of her life to the project after the Time Lords managed to fetch the Doctor's TARDIS, along with the Doctor and Jo, back to its proper place, and Robert Lumic stayed on with her, training his son Johnny as his apprentice...

**THE END?**


End file.
